Software licensing for academic purposes
SAP donates software licenses to member institutions for broad academic use in for-credit degree and diploma programs and research projects.

Curriculum content
SAP supports the development of high-quality course materials by highly qualified academics and makes these resources available for download through the members-only area of the University Alliances community.

Professors can easily integrate SAP software–specific content into their required and elective courses in their existing degree programs. These course materials are available in a wide range of academic disciplines, and content typically includes classroom presentations, exercises, problem sets, case studies, and instructor notes. Several courses also include ready-to-use online demonstrations and videos.

Member professors are free to employ their choice of resources from the program’s curriculum portfolio in order to support their individual educational objectives.

Professional development opportunities for professors
SAP provides free workshops for professors designed specifically to present the course content of the SAP University Alliances program. Sessions are delivered by experienced academics from member campuses and by SAP employee and partner experts.

The workshops provide participants with a thorough understanding of the educational strategies and opportunities provided by SAP products and the respective curriculum resources.

SAP also sponsors collaboration-oriented academic events at various locations to further teaching and research while assisting member professors to build professional networks and connections, such as:

• SAP Curriculum Congress in the Americas
• SAP University Alliances User Group Meeting in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
• SAP Academic Conference in the Asia Pacific Japan region.

Members meet at these and many other academic and industry events to further their professional development in teaching, research, publications, curriculum development, and intercampus exchanges

Greater integration with local economies
Governments in the Middle East and university initiatives have underlined the crucial importance of establishing links with local businesses and supporting them. Many countries in MENA have unique local economic environments and universities increasingly seek to reflect local needs in their course provision and in their partnerships with local businesses.

Student retention and course relevance
Despite the changes and improvements in course delivery and content over the past years some students still feel that academic courses are less relevant to them. This is due in no small part to the speed of economic and technological change which means that even courses developed recently can be perceived as out of date very quickly. Universities have to seek out means to provide access to the latest educational resources whilst the useful duration of those facilities and skills gets ever shorter.

Variety of subjects
To attract and retain the best students universities increasingly offer a more diverse and sophisticated range of subjects that reflect that complexity of the modern world. Universities increasingly deploy new delivery mechanisms including e-learning, vocational and mature/lifelong learning and then combine them with an ever broader range of study streams so that student choice is greater than ever before. This presents a means to differentiate the school based on course content whilst strengthening core content applicable across multiple courses from marketing and accounting to operations and strategy.

Staff attraction and retention
In certain core subjects – most notably business and IT/Computing – higher education institutions often find it difficult to attract and retain the best qualified lecturers that will enable them to offer their chosen courses. Schools are faced with the need to attract staff just as the sector enters a phase of ever more intense competition for limited resources.