Abstract:

Over the past decade, higher education institutions around the world have faced new challenges concerning their main missions: training in research, vocational training, cultural development and inequality issues. In such a context, training courses (bachelor, master) must combine a high level of academic excellence and performance in terms of graduates' integration into rapidly changing employment markets. This paper focuses on a study conducted within Qatar University, which was founded in 1977. The economic power of Qatar, as small country (in terms of size and number of inhabitants) localised the Gulf region historically comes from the production of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG), but the country has been committed to a diversification strategy based on a knowledge-based economy for some 20 years.

In this paper we will report on a comparison between two industry based training models (Lyon University, France and SFIVET Institute, Switzerland) and their possible adoption in Qatar and the Middle-East contexts. We will highlight the local realities and constraints, from both education system and labor market sides and explain why a simple transfer is not possible. The identified constraints are based on a detailed analysis, made during a collaborative project called Pro-SKIMA.
The analysis results highlight specific characteristics of a possible re-contextualisation process (within a master of science in computing curriculum of Qatar University). A case study related to Cybersecurity, that requires to be closely and strongly connected to rapid evolutions in the real world, will be detailed and the challenges for its deployment at the Computer Science and Engineering department will be detailed. We will finally explain how such education process will be Integration in the university entrepreneurship and innovation process.

Keywords:

Industry Based Education, Re-Contextualisation, Information Technology, Cybersecurity, Innovation.