As protesters across the Arab world demand an end to autocratic regimes that have drained universities of resources and suffocated critical thinking, scholars see some hope of an Arab renaissance and a new opening for American involvement.
There is a strong need, says Farouk El-Baz, an Egyptian-born scientist at Boston University, for “the educational system in the U.S. to speak out and say, ‘We know that you have been left behind, and we are willing to help in any way, shape, or form.’”
From the ancient Library of Alexandria to a new Islamic-arts museum in Qatar that holds 700-year-old astrolabes and ornate calligraphy, the Arab world’s rich tradition of learning, science, and literature is clear. But across much of the Middle East and North Africa, that intellectual culture has taken a beating in the past century.
High fertility rates have led to demographic youth “bulges": In Algeria, for example, about 23 percent of the population is between the ages of 15 and 24. Such large college-age populations, combined with the belief in many countries that universities should be free, have led to unworkable enrollments. An Egyptian professor may have 1,000 students in a class and need three months to grade a final examination. The students who graduate from such institutions have few skills and compete for few jobs, but are educated enough to know that they are idle bystanders in the global economy.
Peter Heath, chancellor of the American University of Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, sums up the source of the region’s educational problems: “Access has been more important than quality.”
It would be unfair of course, to paint the more than 20 Arabic-speaking countries and territories in the Middle East and North Africa with a single brush. The region is sprinkled with some new, highly aspirational institutions, and some venerable, well-accredited ones.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, a graduate institution with a $10-billion-dollar endowment, has just graduated its first class. Qatar’s Education City has attracted six American universities, the business school HEC Paris, and, soon, University College London. The American University of Beirut, in the city that was once a symbol of a civil war but is now far safer than Tripoli, serves up the liberal arts alongside business and engineering programs.
Swamped by Demand
Such institutions, while valuable for the region’s best students, would be swamped if they tried to broaden their reach. The capacity of every internationally accredited institution in the region could easily be swallowed up by the needs of the students at a single Egyptian public university, which might enroll 150,000.
Despite the scale of the problem, many American scholars feel compelled to help, and see the regime changes as providing new avenues for aid.
“I definitely view it as potential opportunity for more engagement with those countries in science and technology more broadly,” says Cathleen A. Campbell, chief executive of the Civilian Research and Development Foundation, a U.S.-government-supported fund that fosters scientific collaboration. The foundation is providing $1.5-million to build a virtual library for Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia.
While the program has been hampered by the recent unrest—a visit by foundation staff members to Morocco was postponed—Ms. Campbell says the library could be expanded to Egypt and other North African countries to improve their digital connections to scientific literature.
Scholars, both regional veterans and newcomers, seem eager to visit. “I’m a political scientist who works on the Middle East,” says Lisa Anderson, president of American University in Cairo. “Everybody I know is calling and saying, ‘You know, this is my spring break, I think I’m going to come to Egypt.’”
On the one hand, Ms. Anderson thinks, “We don’t need another lecture by a visiting political scientist.” On the other hand, “It is actually a fabulous, wonderful opportunity to think about politics, to think about the region.” To handle this new demand, the university has established a fund for visiting scholars.
Norman J. Peterson, vice provost for international education at Montana State University, says scholars on the ground need to gather information about what is going on in the Middle East and North Africa and digest it, giving international offices on campuses in the United States analyses that they might otherwise never get. That information, he says, can in turn be used by universities to determine what overseas programs would work best.
Mr. Peterson also sees strong value in a standard of the academic-exchange repertoire: delegations of presidents, vice presidents, and other academic leaders visiting countries where governments have changed, once the countries are relatively safe. Those trips, he says, create good public relations in the countries visited and help American universities identify what is possible and welcome.
A Varied Landscape
The potential for future tours varies, depending on the country, and would reflect past involvement. Egypt has the oldest and best-established Fulbright program in the region, which emphasizes two-way exchanges of both scholars and students. American universities are free to arrange their own study-abroad programs with individual universities, but they have sought out partners in countries perceived as relatively safe, like Morocco or Egypt. Yemen, considered dangerous and chaotic by its own neighbors, has largely been shunned by American partners. Some study-abroad programs have sought out Syria, where Arabic students are less likely to be able to lapse into English.
Amideast, a Washington-based nonprofit organization, is one of the largest education-related American philanthropies working in the Arab world, with roots in many countries, and often tries to help college graduates get the professional skills they need for employment.
Programs of the State Department and the Agency for International Development that are related to universities have encountered peaks and valleys in the region. In 2003 they started an effort to connect American universities with Arab counterparts, providing nearly $3.6-million so far to establish 23 partnerships.
Scholars of the Middle East and North Africa emphasize the cultural differences among the countries as well.
“The region is a giant tapestry, and it really requires a lot of study to understand each part of it,” says David B. Woodward, chief executive of Associates in Cultural Exchange, a nonprofit that has helped American universities and businesses create ties to the Persian Gulf. Mr. Woodward speaks both Persian and Arabic, and tells universities to be careful whom they send to the region, and to make sure they have some cultural and geographical basics. At an airport security checkpoint in Bahrain recently, a professor noticed a sign announcing a women’s inspection station and asked a security guard, “How many women do you have for us to inspect?” Many people in the line winced.
Dale Eickelman, a professor of anthropology at Dartmouth College, recalls a 2004 inaugural meeting with parents at Dartmouth’s overseas partner, the American University of Kuwait. The university’s president opened the meeting with parents in English, the university’s official language. After less than a minute, Mr. Eickelman says, parents in the audience began calling out “bi’l Arabi,” or “in Arabic.” Since some of the parents were not university-educated themselves, they were more comfortable speaking Arabic. Their questions, Mr. Eickelman says, were similar to those that parents elsewhere might have: about accreditation, costs, and job prospects.
For Dartmouth, its partnership in Kuwait has held unexpected benefits. The majority of computer-science majors at the American University of Kuwait are women, although at Dartmouth computer-science majors are mostly men. That difference has, in turn, led to exploration of how the discipline is organized and taught in the two places.
Reforms Under Way
American universities considering raising their involvement in the Middle East and North Africa could learn from those with experience adapting the American higher-education model to the needs of the Arab world.
At the American University of Beirut, an office of regional external programs consults throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Hassan B. Diab, the vice president in charge, says the office has helped about 25 universities with services ranging from standard consulting to providing temporary deans or building institutions from the ground up.
“We don’t come in and say this is the curriculum of AUB and the liberal arts as it is done in the U.S.,” says George Farag, an assistant vice president in the external-programs office. “We put forth a model that takes into account local thought.” Coed education will work in Lebanon but not in Saudi Arabia, for example.
The Beirut consultants also know about regional developments that might affect new programs or inform choices of partners.
Mr. Diab says independent accreditation councils in countries like Oman and the United Arab Emirates are becoming a force for institutional quality. On the negative side, he worries about the rapid growth of private universities, especially for-profit ones. “The survival rate is not very good,” he says.
And ventures started by American universities will find a scarcity of regional talent, with institutions competing for administrators and faculty members, and academics often hopping from one institution to another.
American universities’ history of blending classroom teaching with real-world experience can be put to good use in the Middle East and North Africa, says Jamie McAuliffe, chief executive of the Education for Employment Foundation, a nonprofit based in Washington that operates job-training programs in Jordan, Egypt, the West Bank, Yemen, and Morocco. For instance, American universities could help partners in the Middle East develop internship programs, as Arab students are rarely exposed to a professional environment before graduating and looking for work, he says.
Mr. McAuliffe says those graduates need “soft skills"—how to work in teams, communicate with co-workers, and make presentations—that are as important as the technical knowledge for in-demand fields like construction management.
Reality Check
American educators who want to work in the Middle East and North Africa need to be prepared to deal with poor facilities and lack of technology, says Kim Schatzel, dean of the University of Michigan at Dearborn’s College of Business. The college earned a U.S. government grant to help modernize business and economic courses at the University of Garyounis, in Libya, in 2006, making it one of the few American universities to work in that country in recent years, she says.
Ms. Schatzel says the Libyan faculty members were highly educated and motivated but often lacked basic tools, like access to the Internet or textbooks.
Greater engagement may turn out to be a goal for many institutions and scholars, but continuing political turmoil also means that some projects are going to come to a halt. Norman R. Smith, a former college president, has been involved in an effort to establish Alamein University at a seaside resort near Alexandria. The ambitious, $350-million plan was to transform 200 acres of land to build a campus that would cater to students from across the Middle East, with the first class starting in 2012.
But construction was halted after protesters took to the streets in January. Mr. Smith says the project was backed by real-estate developers linked to the Mubarak government. He is not optimistic about its future.
“As of now, it’s all just on hold,” says Mr. Smith.
Other universities say they may have to return money for programs they have started in countries like Yemen and Libya, which face even more-uncertain futures.
In Egypt and other parts of the region hit by mass protests, some academic programs operated by American institutions are slowly returning to life after being disrupted.
“There’s a return to stability, but I won’t say normalcy” in Cairo, says Tully Cornick, executive director of Higher Education for Development, a Washington nonprofit that administers 19 U.S. government-supported university partnerships in the region,
Last month the group announced $360,000 in new grants to American community colleges to develop plans to teach entrepreneurship and business development at Arab technical and vocational schools. With some of the partner institutions located in hot spots like Bahrain and Yemen, government officials are keeping a close eye on safety concerns, says Mr. Cornick.
Catherine Cassara, an associate professor at Bowling Green State University’s School of Media and Communication, who helps teach environmental journalism as part of a partnership among her institution and universities in Algeria and Tunisia, says a workshop she was helping to organize in the region was postponed indefinitely because of the unrest.
But she’s hopeful the project can continue—and perhaps become an example of positive engagement during this period of sweeping political change.
“Everything is up in the air,” she says. “We have a chance with this to make a difference.”
Ursula Lindsey contributed to this article from Cairo.
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