Evaluating Political Planning and Development Program at An-Najah National University from the Standpoint of Graduates

This study aimed at evaluating the Masters program “Planning and Political Development” (hereinafter referred to as PPD) at An-Najah National University (hereinafter referred to as ANNU) from the point of view of the graduates. This is significant since it was the first to evaluate the aforementioned program in the aforementioned university by one of the students of the program. Thus, it highlighted the following question: What are the main columns of the successes and failures of the program in the area of reinforcing planning and political development in Palestine in the point of view of the graduates? The main assumption of the study was that the process of assessing the program of PPD can contribute to the development of the program and flooding the Palestinian community with efficient and highly qualified graduates. Such qualifications contribute to the enhancement of planning and political development since the research wasn’t based on the main assumption(s) on any previous evaluations of the regular meetings of the staff of professors and the academic evaluation which every student does every semester and every course. Furthermore, the main assumption was based on not having statistical variations at the level of the evaluation of students of the program and the content of the tool of the study according to its variations. The researcher employed the main methodology to complete the thesis, which is the descriptive- analytical methodology depending on a questionnaire. It consisted of 68 questions in order to collect data, and they were classified into four dimensions namely: students, courses, staff of professors and the community. In addition, the corpus of the study comprised 150 graduate students from the previously mentioned program; the sample was chosen by using the random applicable method based on the variable of the year of graduation. In other words, the random sample comprised 70 students that 63 were taken as the final population of the study (about 42% of the population). The results show that evaluating the program of PPD at ANNU from the point of view of its graduates is medium with a percentage of about (71.75%) and the average of all the dimensions is (2.87%). In light of this result, the recommendations of the researcher can be summarized in the following: 1. It is necessary to enhance the cooperation between students and the staff of professors to work together in supporting the results of the programs and build upon them. 2. It is necessary to go over the program and evaluate it in a way that guarantees the evaluation of the courses to cope with the changes, the issues and developments in the local, regional and international arena.