This benchmarking exercise provided someimportant lessons on the tool itself and its capacity to: 1)identify strengths and weaknesses at individualinstitutions; 2) identify trends at the national level; 3)identify trends and practices by type of institution; and 4)generate interest to initiate reforms at the institutional,national, and regional levels. It is clear from this firstround of data collection (and the subsequent increaseddemand and interest from institutions to participate), thatuniversities are seeking to find meaningful ways to comparethemselves with other institutions around the world, butmore importantly, that they are genuinely interested infinding ways of improving their performance. Countries inthe Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are goingthrough an important political transformation, and this islikely to impact their economic and social development forthe next few years. The January 2011 revolution in Tunisiaand Egypt's uprising transformed the political andsocial environments in both countries. In all MENAcountries, recovery will depend on the capacity to developnew markets and to employ fiscal prudence. Universities playa key role in all societies because they are directlyinvolved in generating new knowledge and because they teachand form young people to become leaders, entrepreneurs,scientists, and professionals in all fields of knowledge. Intoday's world, knowledge generation has replacedcapital assets as the key ingredient for economic growth.Universities need to innovate to provide the kind ofeducation that will enable their graduates to be competitiveand to contribute to the economic and social growth of their countries.
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