خلاصة:
Member states of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) have
committed themselves to promote a program of action to improve and
reform their educational institutions and curricula on the basis of the "OIC
Vision 1441". As part of this commitment, a process has been initiated to
review current international university ranking systems and to create a
specific mechanism for ranking universities of the OIC countries. In this
study, we explore the criteria that emerged as an outcome of this process and
have been adopted for the purpose of ranking OIC universities. We raise the
challenge that, although the idea of an OIC-specific ranking mechanism is a
potentially valuable initiation for the Islamic countries to converge and
cooperate, the whole endeavor tends to deal only with rudimentary issues in
science, education, and research. The core conceptions, taken for granted
and almost left untreated, continue to exist under the disguise of the newly
fabricated criteria. For each one of the five major sets of criteria (Research,
Education, International out-look, Facilities, and Socio-economic impact) we
discuss why we believe they deal with the 'cover' rather than the 'core' of
quality in higher education and research. We further discuss that truly
alternative practices in the context of specific socio-cultural values, require
revisiting underlying and taken for granted understandings of science,
research, and technology. To walk our own way and to challenge the
dominant mainstream global forces, we need a fundamentally alternative
view of the quality and value of knowledge and basically of the value of the
human being.
ملخص الجهاز:
Several aspects of the project, including issues of education, research, and journal publication are referred to in the challenges that we raise about the criteria, procedures and mechanisms that have recently been adopted by the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) for the purpose of ranking universities of the Islamic countries.
degrees , International conferences organized , International exchange programs FacihGes, Number of book titles per student , Number of journals/periodicals accessible , Number of university research Institutes Socio-economic Impact, Contracts and consultancies , Life learning courses , Entrepreneurship programs and industrial linkages , Number of incubated projects and spin-off companies The apparent logic behind the OIC university ranking initiation seems to be based on criticisms raised against the worldwide ranking systems (Toure, 2007) and an attempt to create a specific ranking mechanism for the specific socio-cultural and political context of the Islamic countries, as communities that value knowledge.
Specifically, we focus on the five major criteria that emerged as the outcome of the April 2007 "Seminar of the OIC Member States on University Ranking" in Tehran to raise the challenge that such alternative practices need to question the core of the understandings that construct the very basis of dominant global perspectives rather than to merely deal with the cover.
For each one of the five major sets of criteria for ranking OIC universities we will discuss why we believe they deal merely with the cover and we pose a number of questions that need to be addressed if the core of quality concerns in higher education and research is to be dealt with.