Continuing education center introduces courses to bridge the gap between industry and academia

Birzeit University’s Center for Continuing Education launches a new series of development courses targeting fresh university graduates, as announced at a news conference held at the center’s headquarters in Ramallah on Monday, August 19, 2019.

The series, created and carried out together with the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development (AFESD), aims to better harmonize the skills of Palestinian university graduates with job market demands and focuses on three unique tracks that address topics in digital economy, accounting, and finance and banking. 

Marwan Tarazi, director of the Center for Continuing Education, said that the courses are designed with an accumulative approach in mind, building on the expertise of the participants and improving their skills to keep abreast of the latest developments in their chosen fields. 

“This is part and parcel of the center’s goal,” Tarazi explained. “To help people keep up with the latest advancements that traditional secondary or tertiary education can’t address, we design and implement programs that, at their core, offer applicable knowledge and enhance the expertise of students.” 

Abdelhadi Yousef, AFESD’s project coordinator, highlighted the courses’ perceived impact on unemployment among graduates and said that each course is designed to address aspects of the unique challenges the Palestinian economy is faced with that affect recent and older graduates alike. 

Noting that the short-term courses were formulated to quickly and efficiently improve relevant skills among participants, Yousef added, “As job market’s demands change frequently, these courses aim to convey and match the latest improvements and advancements in the field.”