IHEC Blog Highlights New Book "Innovation Through Education: Building the Knowledge Economy in the Middle East"

For the second day in a row I am highlighting a new book that I think many IHEC Blog readers will be interested in reading.  Like all book "reviews" on IHEC Blog I write less like I'm reviewing for a journal and more like I'm informing about a book that I think is worthwhile to investigate further.


During the NAFSA annual conference I picked the entire Global Education Research Reports series (a joint effort by the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the AIFS Foundation (really great stuff they are doing in the field and they'll be mentioned again in a post next week!).  I first posted to IHEC Blog about the Global Education Research Reports series back in June 2008.   While in Kansas City this past May I picked-up the first three books in the series from the American Institute for Foreign Study (AIFS) booth in the exhibit hall (see my post from Tuesday about my exhibit hall activities) as they are an annual must stop for me because of the excellent literature they provide (shh! let's keep it a secret so no one gets to their booth before me to get all of the good literature).  The fourth book in the series Innovation Through Education: Building the Knowledge Economy in the Middle East was recently published and promoted just after the NAFSA conference.  I was fortunate to get a copy (almost hot off the press) from a secret source!  While I wanted to post to IHEC Blog earlier about this new book I wanted to read it first and did so just this past weekend.  There are five  reports scheduled for this series and as soon as the fifth is published I'll be sure to post to IHEC Blog about it!  


I really enjoyed reading Innovation Through Education: Building the Knowledge Economy in the Middle East and found it to be very informative and it is one of the best reports that I have read in quite some time (and I often find my nose buried in international education literature).  I work with many, many students in my day job as Senior Adviser for International Initiatives in The College at The University of Chicago who want to study and/or research independently in the Middle East (as well as those who already have been in the region and plan to return) and I also work with incoming international exchange students from Egypt.  This book is an excellent resource for my practice in the field as well as in my side research and consulting activities.


The Table of Contents follows:


Foreword 

Allan E. Goodman, President and CEO, IIE

Bill Gertz, President and CEO, AIFS 
Introduction 
Jamil Salmi, World Bank 
Chapter 1: The “Knowledge Society” in the Middle East 
Daniel Kirk, American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
Chapter 2: Different Emirates, Different Models: Creating Global Institutions in the Gulf States 
Spencer Witte, Ishtirak
Chapter 3: Higher Education Creates Higher Expectations in Jordan: Combatting the Loss of the Kingdom’s Intellectual Wealth 
Robert G. Ayan Jr., Cambridge Advisors LLC
Chapter 4: Strategic Planning in Higher Education in the Middle East: The Case of Non-Gulf Countries 
Hana A. El-Ghali, Qianyi Chen, and John L. Yeager, University of Pittsburgh 
Chapter 5: The Role of Internationalization in Women’s Education in the Middle East 
Haifa Reda Jamal Al-Lail, Effat University 
Chapter 6: Promoting U.S.–Middle Eastern Cultural Understanding through Youth Exchange 
Sherifa M.B.E. Fayez, AFS Egypt  and Dan Prinzing, Idaho Human Rights Education Center 
Chapter 7: Advancing U.S. Study Abroad in the Arab World 
Jerome Bookin-Weiner, AMIDEAST and Ahmad Majdoubeh, University of Jordan 
Chapter 8: The U.S. Arabic Distance Learning Network: An Effort to Expand Instruction in a Less Commonly Taught Languages 
Norman J. Peterson and Yvonne M. Rudman, Montana State University 
Appendices
IIE’s Activities in the MENA Region 
Daniel Obst, IIE and Liz Khalifa, IIE/MENA


Classifying Higher Education Institutions in the MENA Region: A Pilot Project 

Rajika Bhandari and Robert Gutierrez, IIE 

Historical Trends in Student Mobility from the Middle East to the United States 

Shepherd Laughlin and Patricia Chow, IIE 

You can learn about all of the four books published thus far in the Global Education Research Reports series here.