President Barack Obama announced a new cooperation plan between higher education institutions in the United States and Islamic states in his address at Cairo University last week.

“All of us must recognise that education and innovation will be the currency of the 21st century and in too many Muslim communities there remains under-investment in these areas”, the President said.

Obama plans to promote cooperation between US and Islamic universities through exchange programmes and scholarships as well as online and distance learning for muslim students.

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Mohammad al-Momani, a political science professor at Yarmouk University in Irbid, Jordan said last week in advance of the President’s visit:

“The level of optimism is pretty significant. We haven’t seen this for a long time. People believe that Obama understands that there is a need for concrete action on the Arab-Israeli conflict and that he has shown … significant commitment to [resolving] the conflict.”

The focus of this plan is on the science and technology sector and coincides with the administrations earlier announcement to concentrate funding on science and engineering education, i-studentadvisor will be covering this story in the upcoming issue of i-SECT, our Science, Engineering, Computing and Technology magazine which will be online in July.