By Cat Holmes
University of Georgia
For students in Tunisia, a university education doesn’t cost a
dime — or rather, a dinar. From first grade through college,
education is free in the small, north African country, thanks
to an expansive education reform begun in 1988.
The reform costs the Tunisian government more than 20 percent
of its annual budget. But it’s paying off.
Today, 99 percent of the country’s 6-year-olds are in school.
And the number of university students has grown from 40,800 to
226,100. It’s expected to double again in the next six years.
As their school and student numbers grow, Tunisian education
officials are looking to the University of Georgia as a model
for further expansion.
Takoi Hamrita, a UGA associate professor of biological and
agricultural engineering, has used a $300,000 grant to help set
up a partnership between UGA and the university system of
Tunisia.
The program will focus on higher-education leadership and
management, strategic planning, curriculum development and
university structure and governance.
Last month, presidents of two Tunisian universities and an
advisor to the Tunisian Minister of Education visited UGA to
meet with some of the faculty.
“In the past, the power [of Tunisia’s university system] was
centralized. Everything came down from the ministry of
education,” said Lilia Gaaloul, advisor to Tunisia’s Minister
of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Technology.
“The concept of universities as you know them here in the
United States did not exist,” Gaaloul said. “The major reform
we have enacted in Tunisia seeks to put the power in the hands
of the presidents of our universities. As our university system
expands, they must be empowered to lead their institutions.”
Decentralization is important to the Tunisians. That makes the
UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
particularly interesting to them.
The college has three campuses (in Athens, Griffin and Tifton)
and extension offices and research facilities in all 159
Georgia counties. Devising a similar system to integrate and
manage a number of facilities is a major goal of the Tunisian
reform.
“Higher education must be accessible to everyone in Tunisia,”
said Slaheddine Gherrissi, president of the University of
Manouba. “As we increase the number of higher education
institutions, management becomes a more crucial issue. One of
the main motivations [of this partnership] is to facilitate
interdisciplinary work among all universities, both internal
and external.”
Like Georgia, Tunisia is geographically diverse. The country
has a Mediterranean coastline, a fertile mountain region and a
region of the Sahara desert.
Many of the country’s almost 10 million people live in rural
areas. So training Tunisian professionals in distance learning
is a major focus.
Indeed, Tunisia has a national mandate to get 20 percent of its
university curriculum on-line by 2006. To oversee this process,
they’ve created a virtual university.
“The focus isn’t simply the technology of putting curriculum
online but the pedagogy of online learning,” said Houcine
Chebli, president of the Virtual University of Tunisia. Chebli
plans to incorporate various UGA strategies.
“Another focus — and an ambitious plan — is to create 10
technology parks by the year 2010,” Hamrita said.
“Tunisia presently has four such parks, which incorporate
university research and technology and business technology and
sales,” said AbdelFettah Ghorbel, director of the Sfax research
park.
“The UGA Georgia BioBusiness Center, which supports bioscience
startup companies, is a model,” Ghorbel said. “The Sfax
technology park project is regarded as an essential component
in the development of the Tunisian economy.”
The parks are modern, low-density facilities catering to high-
tech industries. “They will provide a range of shared, on-site
resources,” Ghorbel said.
(Cat Holmes is a science writer with the University of Georgia
College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.)
