Benchmarking tool helps universities reform and monitor progress

By Wagdy Sawahel. A screening card for measuring how effectively universities are governed has been endorsed by the World Bank as a means of encouraging institutional reform in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) after trials at 41 universities in four countries.
The World Bank report, Universities through the Looking Glass: Benchmarking university governance to enable higher education modernisation in MENA, details the implementation, data analysis and validation of a university governance screening card piloted in Egypt, Morocco, the occupied Palestinian territory and Tunisia.
Adriana Jaramillo, a senior education specialist at the World Bank who led the research for the report, said: “The card introduced a culture of benchmarking universities in the Arab World.”
The card and an accompanying website were developed by the World Bank, in partnership with the Marseille Centre for Mediterranean Integration, and launched in 2010. The website gives access to higher education indicators, and innovative data visualisation tools were developed by the World Bank.