Industry-Academia Partnership for Sustainable Development in Palestine

Signing cooperation agreements is considered as the first step in building industry-academia partnership, but it is not enough as far as they stay on paper. These partnership agreements have to enhance the economic prosperity, social equity, and environmental protection and global responsibilities, while solving the industrial technical and logistic problems. Cooperation may include carrying out scientific research activities and applying the results of these researches to solve real problems of industry. The current partnership situation in Palestine shows a weak cooperation, hence steps to improve the partnership are urgent. European experience of industry-academia partnership can be the base for developing similar programs and activities for Palestine and other developing countries. This paper discusses the existing status of industry-academia partnership with relevance to engineering education and the horizons of implementing new scenarios and strategies in developing countries particularly in Palestine. In order to close the gap between academia and industry it is suggested to implement curricula improvement by including sustainability concepts on one hand and improving teaching methods on the other hand. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.