Translated article: Together to Reform Higher Education and Scientific Research in Tunisia”

Tunisians Researchers formed a facebook group called, “Together to reform of higher education and scientific research in Tunisia,” which has 53 members.
On its front page, the group stated their demands to the new government in order to improve scientific research which read as follows:

• Give a professional status to doctorate degrees, as is the case with engineers and lawyers and doctors, so holders do not end up unemployed or work on daily wages;
• Adjust the retirement age for university professors to sixty years in order to provide more teaching positions for researchers who have completed their doctoral thesis successfully, with a possible extension of three years to those professors advising student researchers;
• Prevention of professors and teachers to do extra hours in their universities and  private universities so as to give students the opportunities to work these hours, in an attempt to reduce unemployment of highly educated youth;
• Improve the conditions of scientific research through:
  • Creation of laboratories and research units with the latest techniques and equipment to enable researchers advance their work.
  • Provide a grant of 250 dinars to 2^nd year Masters students and 500 dinars for Ph.D. students. The grant should be terminated for researchers having a second  job or who are hired by the university or those who exceeded 6 years doing their doctoral thesis
  • Put a limit to the number of students supervised by professors and lecturers;
• Consider researchers who completed their doctorate degrees  and have 3 years experience or more for Assistant Professors positions.
• The independence of scientific research of laboratories and research units, and enable all students to benefit from them regardless of their affiliation.
• Protection of researcher’s work being hijacked and attributed to their professors as their own work
• Enable researchers at 2^nd year doctoral level to be employed at the university.
• Ensure the credibility of committee assigning assistants and assistants professors.
• To enable all researchers, without exception, at Doctoral  level  to get  scholarship opportunities in order to study at foreign countries