تصور مقترح للتحول إلى جامعات بحثية في ظل التوجه نحو الاقتصاد المعرفي
The research aimed to support the differentiation model of the university education system in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and support its orientation towards knowledge economy, through the proposal transform into research universities. To achieve this objective the descriptive approach used. By the Delphi technique as a method to survey the opinion of the experts. Depending on electronic questionnaire as a tool to identify the most important future requirements to transform into a research universities, developed through three rounds to reach stability in the experts' responses on the proposed requirements. The tool was been applied in the whole rounds on a non-probability sample of Maximum differences with the help of the respondent included 27 experts in management, planning and higher education. For data processing, a number of statistical methods used as weighted arithmetic average, standard deviation, and the relative importance. After data analysis and processing, results showed that the most important dimensions of the transformation requirements to research universities in the shade of orientation towards the knowledge economy from the perspective of the experts, the academic dimension and research programs dimension with a mean was (2.89). Followed by the policy and institutional strategic dimension with a mean was (2.85). Then scientific research dimension and international dimension with a mean was (2.81) and (2.80) respectively. At the level of requirements the most significant transformation requirements represents in "facilities and laboratories equipped with the latest tools, equipment and supporting technologies for scientific research," and "incentives and rewards moral and material research for Outstanding Achievements", they got a high level of importance with a mean (3.00). The search finished with a Conceive proposal to transform into a research universities, and hopefully contribute to help planners and educational leaders to make wise decisions that support this transformation to contribute the growth of the knowledge economy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. (Published abstract)