How far are students willing to go to achieve an education and the promises it holds? We know about American students who spend their vacations not in prestigious internships or on “voluntourism” missions abroad, but mowing lawns, mopping floors, and doing odd jobs to scrape together enough cash to cover their next semester’s college tuition. But what about in places where the stakes are even higher — where the mission to achieve an education can mean risking death?
For young Syrian refugees, education is the only hope of escaping a life spent idling and impoverished in camps. But the obstacles are steep. In many refugee camps, schools are inadequate, if they exist at all, and in many cases they don’t have offerings beyond the primary level. So valued are bachelor’s degrees that university students who were close to graduation before fleeing are even venturing back into the war zones from which they escaped just to sit for their examinations.
The harrowing lengths these students go to in order to earn their credentials seems astonishing, yet it illustrates a crucial feature of today’s Middle East: Despite the violence and chaos, an enormous demand for high-quality education survives at all levels. In a region where groups like ISIS prey on uneducated youth, and unemployment is soaring among young people, the education crisis is not simply a matter of technical policy, or of regional concern, but of crucial national-security importance for the United States. With half of the population of the Middle East under age 25, promoting widespread and meaningful education in the region would be more fully transformative — and less costly — than almost any other policy measure the United States could undertake, military or otherwise.
And yet the policy response from our government has been lukewarm. Efforts so far have been piecemeal, not nearly ambitious enough, and lacking recognition as a central part of an American security strategy. The United States needs a focused, long-term plan to support education as a key element of promoting change in the Mideast. This should include efforts in three broad categories: assistance for educational reform, more-effective links between the region and American colleges, and increases in short-term people-to-people exchanges.
Assisting with educational reform is not a simple matter; the topic is controversial, politicized, and fraught with vested interests. The first principle should be “do no harm.” The notion that the United States can or should impose its imprimatur on other countries’ education systems is simply wrong.
That said, unlike many other aspects of its image in the Middle East, in the world of education the American brand is still golden, and we should do more to make available any assistance and advice requested. There are many ways to do this, including offering training in specific areas for educators and administrators, bringing together effective American change agents with their Middle Eastern counterparts, and elevating support for education reform on the list of priorities for American diplomatic missions.
Unlike many other aspects of its image in the Middle East, in the world of education the American brand is still golden.
One underutilized network that the United States already possesses is the vast pool of students from the Middle East enrolled in American colleges. These students, who numbered more than 114,000 in the 2014-15 academic year, are highly sought after by colleges, mainly because they pay full tuition to cash-strapped institutions, either through generous government programs, or through wealthy benefactors.
However, once enrolled, these young people do not always receive necessary support.
Colleges need to make sure that their Middle Eastern students succeed academically, but just as important, they must provide these students with a fuller, more integrated experience of American life. Given the depth of suspicion among Americans about the Middle East in general, it is a significant lost opportunity not to consciously introduce “real Americans” to “real Middle Easterners.”
Furthermore, once these students return to their home countries, American institutions need to keep in touch with them, recognizing the role they will play as leaders in their societies. This alumni outreach receives some federal support, but the effort by both academia and government is far too piecemeal and modest, especially given the potential benefits of such relationships.
Beyond degree programs, shorter-duration exchanges are among the most effective programs available to American embassies. These include experimentation with virtual exchange programs, such as the new Stevens Initiative, founded in honor of the slain Ambassador Chris Stevens, which is developing innovative means to reach communities that may not be able to participate in direct exchanges.
Still, the overall level of resources devoted to these exchange programs is a rounding error compared with the vast budgets for military and intelligence assets in the region. For example, the Fulbright Program, America’s flagship educational exchange, received just under $243 million in congressional appropriations in 2013, less than the cost of a single F-35B fighter jet. It’s hard to name an initiative that has had more concrete impact, dollar for dollar, than the Fulbright. According to the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board’s annual report, the program has, in the past 20 years, produced 25 foreign heads of state. The State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program has a similar record of accomplishment, with the added feature of involving local American communities in the planning of professional exchanges between foreign and American experts in multiple fields.
Despite their proven results and long-term strategic potential, there is no serious effort to integrate education and exchange efforts into the mainstream of America’s engagement with the Mideast region. Yet they are among this country’s most powerful tools to effect positive change abroad at what are, in the scheme of the national-security budget, bargain-basement prices.
At a time when many Americans may prefer to turn away from problem zones like the Middle East, it is important to show both value and results from our government’s efforts. That’s why it is time that educational initiatives be recognized for their cost effectiveness, expanded, and treated as an invaluable aspect of American national-security policy.
Richard LeBaron is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He served as U.S. ambassador to Kuwait from 2004 to 2007. Jessica Ashooh is deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Strategy Task Force.
