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Gaza Strip and West Bank

Higher Education



There are 16 community colleges in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 5 of which are government sponsored. Study duration is two years after the Tawhiji examinations, leading to a diploma. They are one of three types: technical community colleges that prepare technicians, academic community colleges that prepare teachers, or hybrid community colleges that prepare both technicians and teachers. The total number of community college students in 1999-2000 was 5,286, distributed among 44 disciplines.



The higher education sector consists of 10 universities and a polytech. The universities, as a group, contain the following faculties: arts, sciences, commerce and economics, engineering, agriculture, law, pharmacy, medicine, medical professions, nursing, education, and hotel management. All were established during the 1970s or later. Their total enrollment for 1999-2000 was about 60,000 students, all but about 2,400 of which were under-graduates.

Two universities are located in the Gaza Strip: Al-Azhar University and Islamic University. The remaining eight are in the West Bank: An-Najah University, Birzeit University, Bethlehem University, Hebron University, Arab-American University, Jerusalem School for Economy and Diplomacy, Al-Quds University, and Al-Quads Open University. The polytech is in Hebron on the West Bank. The offerings of these universities are supplemented occasionally by those of foreign schools. Marquette University (United States) and the University of Calgary (Canada), for example, have conducted degree programs in the Gaza Strip in several rehabilitation and special education fields for which local training was unavailable.


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