The importance of relations between universities and their socio-economic environment has become a topical issue in Europe in the last 20 years, and has also been stressed within the implementation of the Bologna process.

Whereas in most European countries, relations between Universities and enterprises have been developed and intensified during the past decade, Tunisian Universities are currently only starting to create strategies and instruments in this domain.

The UNILINK project is aimed at stimulating the development of a Tunisian university-enterprise cooperation culture, by promoting good practice for implementing university based enterpriese liaison offices in 6 Tunisian Universities, creation of capacities in human resources, promoting of coherent information and communication strategies among the Universities’ communities and within the local business environment as well as providing necessary strategic input for the creation of long-term partnerships and collaborative research with enterprises.

In the longer term, the project aims to contribute to contribute to:

• higher employability of students though improved training and employment prospects,
• generation of opportunity to attract additional funds for teaching & research,
• increasing of financial autonomy of Universities through stimulating of cooperative research with enterprises and generation of supplemental income from consulting,
• increased innovation and technology transferand stronger economic development.

The establishment of well structured interface-scheme for the creation of university-enterprise partnerships in 6 Tunisian universities can furthermore serve as a role model and stimulate structural and management reforms in other Tunisian higher education institutions willing to establish relations with their economic environment.