CIMQUSEF5: 5th International Conference on Quality in Education
Marrakech: 22-24 April 2008
The higher education plays an increasingly dominating role in a society where the knowledge is the engine of the economy. The future is with that which manages to generate new knowledge and to exploit it in new productions. The university which has always been considered as an inevitable source of knowledge is more than ever concerned. It has to modernize its working methods, to revolutionize its methods of teaching, to improve its governance and to reform its institutions of research. Diffusing knowledge is not enough for it, it must also create knowledge, which places research among the major concerns of the persons in charge for the higher education. However this one is confronted with new challenges which interest not only the questions of access, equity, funding and quality, but also those of national sovereignty and cultural diversity . We attend an uncontrolled increase in the number of students accompanied by a limited offer by Public higher education and at the same time we are witness an amplified development of the offer of the cross-border higher education which obeys the market economy. This generates a real problem of equity, teaching for the poor and teaching for the rich person, and obliges the authorities to diversify the sources of financing and to regulate the market of the higher education. What puts them in front of a dilemma to be solved: to finance the creation of universities able to diffuse, under good conditions, knowledge with a growing number of students, or to encourage the production of knowledge by subsidizing the research institutions. It is clear that the developing countries do not have the financial capacity to carry out correctly these two tasks. What to choose? To reinforce the role of teaching of the university at the point to give up its mission of research, what would raise the problem of quality. Or to finance the research programs suitably at the risk of restricting the access of the students to the universities, thus raising the problem of equity?
Beyond the financial problem, research is confronted with several problems in connection with its organization, its management, its institutionalization, its utility, its practices and its socio-economic impact. Be it financed by public or private silent partners, it must satisfy the needs for the society under the best conditions of cost and time, which raises the question of its quality.
To address these issues, the CIMQUSEF5 has examined the theme: "Quality of Research: from planning to evaluation".
Professor Mahdi Elmandjra, former Vice Director of UNESCO, was the guest of honor of the CIMQUSEF5.
To understand all aspects of the thematic adressed in this edition of CIMQUSEF you can download documents from the prgramme below.
JACQUES LANARES
Vice Rector University of Lausanne, Switzerland
JACOB SELESHO
Central University of Technology , South Africa
LIDIA NICULITA
Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest, Romania
IVAN BAJOMI 
Griffith University, Hungary
ANCA GABRIELA ILIE
Academy of Economic Studies - Bucharest, Romania
ABDELHAK BEL LAKHDAR
Director of GRAFE, Morocco
AISSA BENSEDIK
University of Alger, Algeria
NINO CHIKHLADZE
Tbilisi State University, Georgia
CHARLES-HENRI RUSSON
MUSTAPHA LAHLALI
AMADOU DIALLO 
Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada
IBRAHIMA MBENGUE
Ministry of Culture, Senegal
PARVIZ BIRJANDI
Islamic Azad University, Iran
MARIO AHUES
University of Chile, Chile
SITI FALINDA PADLEE
University of Technology, Malaysia
ABDOLREZA PAZHAKH
Islamic Azad University, Iran
WILLIAMS EMEKA OBIOZOR
Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, USA
JEAN MENTHONNEX
director of EUROQUAL, Switzerland
RAFAEL LLAVORI
Head of the International Relations Unit - ANECA, Spain
ROGER NIFLE
COHERENCES Institute, France
VESNA DODIKOVIĆ-JURKOVIĆ
Agency for Science and Higher Education, Croatia
LASZLO VASA
Szent István University, Hungary
MALGORZATA JANIAK
Jagiellonian University of Krakow, Poland
STEFAN HORNBOSTEL
Institute for Research Information
and Quality Assurance, Germany
“Monitoring External Funded Research - Experiences with New Monitoring Tools at the German Research Foundation (DFG)”
JOAO BACELAR
European University Foundation, Portugal
OLE PREHN
Aalborg University, Denmark
“Research Evaluation: the Dannish experience”