CMI - MARSEILLE CENTER FOR MEDITERRANEAN INTEGRATION

“Building a University Governance Screening Card Program”: Regional workshop in Cairo on November 19-20, 2011

In the framework of their program “Building a University Governance Screening Card Program”, the World Bank and the Center for Mediterranean Integration (CMI) are organizing a workshop jointly with the Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education on November 19 and 20, 2011 in Cairo, Egypt.

Forty representatives of international universities will participate; some of those from Egypt, Morocco, Palestine and Tunisia are already partners of the program. To launch this Program, a Seminar on Universities as key institutional partners for developing good governance practices in MENA took place in December 16-17, 2009. Recommendations that emerged from the seminar included developing a set of Governance Indicators to be used to conduct a baseline survey, a mechanism to monitor their progress, and benchmarking exercises.

The two-day workshop has two goals: The first aim is to discuss the results of the benchmarking exercise at country level and at regional level. After several revisions, the benchmarking tool was finalized in July 2010 and the research team collected the data over the subsequent months.  The sample of universities included representation from many different types of universities: public, private, small, large, from urban areas, from rural areas, secular and non-secular.  The analysis of data was finalized during the summer of 2011.  At the workshop, each participating university will have an opportunity to discuss its results from the Governance Screening Card. In addition, each participating country will have discuss its Country Report in separate sessions and at a plenary session in order to identify and analyze similarities and differences among university governance approaches at country and regional levels.

Secondly, the workshop will seek to explore with all participating institutions and Ministries both the future steps of the program and how to implement the possible reforms identified following the political events that started with the Arab Spring. The workshop participants will also discuss how this benchmarking tool can be used for policymakers to monitor progress in reform implementation and how to build a community of practitioners using the Internet.
                                                                                                                        
The Governance Screening Card will provide a mechanism for monitoring changes introduced in Governance practices and structures. It will also allow MENA universities to compare themselves with universities around the world and is the first step toward developing a more comprehensive tool to monitor university performance.

More information:

• Governance and Quality Assurance in Higher Education Program of the CMI