MARKET ORIENTATION IN TUNISIAN HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

The concept of ‘market’ in the academic world is becoming a global phenomenon. Notions such as efficiency, competitiveness and performance are familiar in the business world, and therefore they can be applied to the public sphere and particularly to the public higher educational institutions in order to create, as one scholar puts it, ‘a compromise between the privatization, university autonomy and government control’. In order to be a significant player in society, the university must be able to adapt to the new trend of its ‘market’. Our study tries to highlight the literature on market orientation in higher education and particularly in the Tunisian higher education sector. The various stages through which this sector has undergone constitutes a good opportunity to develop a more global orientation of its ‘market’.