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The goal of the dissertation is to study the needs and perceptions of academics in Palestine and the conditions that affect their ability to change and improve the education of a rapidly growing generation of learners. The few studies that have examined the Palestinian professoriate are either outdated or incomplete--a review of the literature did not yield a single study devoted to academics in Palestine. Thus this dissertation provides the most comprehensive portrait of Palestinian academics that can be obtained, given the tumultuous political situation in the region. By describing the needs of the professors and, by extension, their students--this study provides information that is not available elsewhere and should prove invaluable to a new Palestinian government and its agencies, the United Nations and other international organizations, and other researchers. The cross-disciplinary data represent the reflections, experiences, and profiles of nearly 18% of the full-time academics in Palestine (the Gaza strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem) and describe the conditions in which they are attempting to achieve their educational goals, as well as their views on the quality of education at their university and how it is affected by finances, access to technology, laboratories, and time spent with students. This dissertation addressed the following points: (1) The educational background, research, teaching load, and service activities of academics in Palestine. (2) The professors' perceptions of the institutional and political conditions at his or her campus and how these factors affect work performance within these institutions. (3) The professors' levels of satisfaction vis-à-vis his or her academic work, institutions, colleagues, environment, and students. The data were collected from professors at nine of the eleven Palestinian universities by means of an electronic survey--the first to be administered in Palestine and one of the first to be used in conjunction with scholarly research. The sixty-nine-question instrument, a shortened and modified version of the Carnegie Study questionnaire (Altbach 1996), was designed to specifically address the lifestyle and culture of Palestinian academics.
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