The importance of relations between universities and their socio-economic environment has become a topical issue in Europe in the last 20 years, and has also been stressed within the implementation of the Bologna process. Whereas in most European countries, relations between Universities and enterprises have been developed and intensified during the past decade, Jordanian universities are currently only starting to create strategies and instruments in this domain. The project is aimed at stimulating the development of a Jordanian university enterprise cooperation culture, by promoting good practice for implementing university based enterprise liaison offices in 8 Jordanian universities, creation of capacities in human resources, promoting of coherent information and communication strategies among the Universities’ communities and within the local business environment as well as providing necessary strategic input for the creation of long-term partnerships and collaborative research with enterprises.
In the longer term, the project aims to contribute to higher employability of students through improved training and employment prospects, generation of opportunities to attract additional funds for teaching & research, increasing the financial autonomy of universities through stimulating cooperative research with enterprises and generation of supplemental income from consulting, and increasing innovation and technology transfer to have a stronger economic development.