JUICEE
Developing Jordanian Universities’
Innovation Capacities and
Entrepreneurship Education
Jordanian’s higher education system faces numerous challenges, which create the need for structural changes. One cause is the country’s poor economic situation, which can be explained by the lack of the country’s own natural resource reserves, limited industry and a tourism industry hampered by the Syrian war and collapsed by the current Corona pandemic (DAAD; BSA, 2017). Consequently, the people themselves represent the country’s most important resource, which means that investing in the higher education sector might improve the situation.
The teaching of Jordanian universities often consists of can be described as primarily theoretical and frontal, which pays little attention to the training of labor market-oriented skills, that are needed for the 21st century. The situation in Syria is similar. Alternative teaching methods in the form, of e.g. project or group work, could be much more helpful for training entrepreneurial competencies, but they rarely occur in the teaching. Yet it is the development of entrepreneurial skills that is central to the Jordanian economy, where new start-ups could lead to an increase in jobs for qualified graduates.
And this need of a change in the teaching in higher education institutions will be addressed by the project „JUICEE“ („Developing Jordanian Universities‘ Innovation Capacities and Entrepreneurship Education“), which sets itself the 4 following goals:
1. Continuing education of teaching staff in curriculum development & entrepreneurship
2. Application-oriented development of one interdisciplinary lecture on entrepreneurship
3. Further qualification of Syrian academics in curriculum development & entrepreneurship
4. Initiation of professional networks in the field of entrepreneurship