Project overview

The TUNED project (TUnisian Network for Employability and Development of graduates' skills) has been selected by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission for co-funding in the framework of the Erasmus+ programme, Key Action 2 - Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices, Capacity Building in the field of Higher Education.

The project started in October 2016 and will end in October 2019.

It is coordinated by the AlmaLaurea Interuniversity Consortium, involves 8 Tunisian Universities as main beneficiaries of the European grant counts on the strong support of the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and the collaboration of 4 higher education institutions from Cyprus, Italy and Spain.

It is a structural project aiming at supporting the ongoing reform of the higher education system in Tunisia, in order to improve the match between universities education and the labour market requirements, enhancing the efficiency of the whole higher education system by a certified system of quality assurance and the monitoring of higher education programmes and graduates.

The build-up of an integrated demand supply matching model based on the graduates’ database (on the model developed in Italy) is designed:

- to collect and analyze data on university and graduates performances (providing reliable, continuous and updated documentation for assessing the HE system at support of the ongoing reform process)

- to facilitate the university-enterprises cooperation (IT-based online services are developed and made available to graduates, firms and university staff)

- to facilitate the orientation and placement of graduates in the labour market (ensuring a better match between education and employment).

- to develop monitoring tools for university/enterprise cooperation

- to improve internal and external efficiency of the higher education system

Project specific objectives

The project envisages the following specific objectives:

• To build Tunisian capacities by transferring EU best practices on graduates' employability and monitoring of universities' performances

• To enhance the empowerment of Tunisian universities

• To strengthen university/labour market linkages

• To increase the collaboration among Universities at local level

• To support an "open" market for high qualified human capital

• To improve the quality of the education system in Tunisia in accordance with international standards

Competence provision and capacity transfer stay as pillar project goals provided at all levels of university staff from the administrative to the IT and researchers. Thus the TUNED project will provide beneficiaries with facilitated job intermediation and demand/supply matching of the young and qualify labour, help ameliorating the unemployment issue and also the underemployment of graduates (which stays as a serious problem for the young in Tunisia) and at the same time trying to understand the needs of the labour market’ stakeholders in terms of skills.

Target groups and benefits

Different activities will be developed to ensure the full involvement of the following main categories of beneficiaries/target groups:

- Tunisian students/graduates

- Tunisian firms

- Governing bodies of Tunisian Universities

- Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research

The main benefits for graduates are the following:

- Free of charge get and use of placement services

- Easy access to information on job/internship opportunities

- Improve placement opportunities, career guidance and self-entrepreneurship tools

- Certification of academic career

- Democratic and qualified access to labour market

- Opportunity to enhance their university by assessing their academic experience in the online questionnaire

The main benefits for firms are the following:

- Availability of CV regularly updated by graduates

- CV search facilities for human resource selection and recruitment purposes

- Possibility to check and compare profiles of graduates to hire

- Opportunity to provide internships/job offers

- Promotion of their employer branding

The main benefits for the Governing bodies of Tunisian Universities and the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research are the following:

- Obtain reliable, timely and regularly updated statistical data useful for improving educational programmes

- Have documentary evidence for all decisional processes and activity planning

- Get a comprehensive system of information for the assessment of both internal and external efficiency

- Promote the easiest and safe mobility of high qualified human resources

- Only for Universities: Facilitate the placement of graduates in labour markets; Improve their skills in terms of graduates' career guidance and cooperation with the business world in a view to enhance graduates' employability.