November 12, 2008
Higher Education in the Middle East
John Waterbury
Past President of American University in Beirut
Minutes of the Ninth Meeting of the 67th Year
President George Hanson called the meeting to order at 10:15 AM following a hospitality hour in the Friend Centre – the ninth meeting of the 67th year. He then swung competently into a double-feature, reading the minutes of the previous meeting. About 85 members attended and two guests were introduced: Tony Glockner by Jock McFarlane, and Letitia Ufford by Claire Jacobus. George Cody called attention to papers at the back of the room available to members bearing information about Linda Maisel’s recent talk on retirement. The President called attention to Guy Dean’s brisk business at the back of the room..
Bruno Walmsley assured members that the appearance of a lovely female on our website did not betoken a change in editorial policy but was due to a temporary glitch over domain registration. The President then reminded members of the Executive Committee of a meeting planned for 10 December Bill Bonini reported that President Tilghman of Princeton University was pleased to accept honorary membership in the Old Guard. Charles Stennard announced that Leonard Schwartz was our newest emeritus member, to the appreciative applause of the meeting. The President then thanked the Arrangements Committee for the refreshments and mentioned the venue and time of next week’s talk on Dutch painting.
David Dodge, the 13th President of the American University of Beirut – the oldest American higher-education institution in the Middle East - introduced his successor, John Waterbury, who became their head in January 1998, restoring their financial and academic health after the long Lebanese civil war. He retired as their President last July but continues to teach there. Before joining AUB he was for twenty years on the faculty of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. He recounted Mr. Waterbury’s distinguished career at Michigan and Columbia.amd at Aix-Marseilles in France.
The speaker recalled his address in 1978 to the Old Guard and having been brought up short by the acumen of his audience. He felt that educational developments were not receiving adequate study here, especially in government circles, and that we were virtually ignoring the potentially-disastrous effects of global warming in the Middle East. In a hundred years the area has changed from an agrarian, rural society with low literacy to a highly literate one whose people see the importance of higher education and no longer think of their prosperity in terms of oil and natural resources but in human resources and talent. Demand for education has skyrocketed but is of inferior quality and quantity. Including Iran, Israel and Turkey, the population is ca. 460 million of which Arabs total ca. 320 million. Of these, twenty percent are aged 15 to 24, i.e. over 90 million. Of these only ten percent receive higher education – 3 ½ million in the Arab world. As a growth area of high demand, institutions like AUB do not feel competition amongst educational institutions. But 40 of the 90 million eligibles are not being well-educated and feel disadvantaged.
Most such education is state-run and is still based on an outdated de-colonization model emanating from Nasser’s Egypt. Education is to build a new citizenry, not training to staff the emerging society’s economic and intellectual needs. Even Turkey forty years earlier showed the same pattern. Being overwhelmed by population growth, the system is unable to cope with very high rates of unemployment, where the better educated one is, the harder it is to find appropriate jobs. However an educated middle class was created – the parents of the 90 million adolescents are resentful of what is not available for their children and constitute a significant political factor. Two hundred-and-fifty universities with sometimes 200,000 nominal students provide sub-standard training and largely fictitious degrees. Appointments are political in nature; professors market their notes to augment their income. Furthermore, governments regard these institutions as hotbeds of disaffection and scatter them about into branches, thus negating the original aim of fostering national unity. Secret police infiltrate student ranks, having little to do but hear lectures. Research is almost nil. A kind of social contract existed wherein parents abjured politics and dissidence in exchange for higher education but they are increasingly unwilling to entrap their children that way.
One encouraging development has been the Arab Human Development Report which has attacked the inadequacy of education, gender policies and governments. Another development which might be positive, but often is not, is the explosive and crassly entrepreneurial entry of thoroughgoing marketeers into education whose objective is profit, not good education. Their shareholders are more important than the students. Yet, the speaker is hopeful. One reason is that American universities operating in the Middle East are required to have the same standards as at home. Unfortunately the speaker’s detailed account ran us to the wire and there was no time for questions and we had to adjourn at 11:30 AM.
Respectfully submitted,
John Frederick
Bruno Walmsley assured members that the appearance of a lovely female on our website did not betoken a change in editorial policy but was due to a temporary glitch over domain registration. The President then reminded members of the Executive Committee of a meeting planned for 10 December Bill Bonini reported that President Tilghman of Princeton University was pleased to accept honorary membership in the Old Guard. Charles Stennard announced that Leonard Schwartz was our newest emeritus member, to the appreciative applause of the meeting. The President then thanked the Arrangements Committee for the refreshments and mentioned the venue and time of next week’s talk on Dutch painting.
David Dodge, the 13th President of the American University of Beirut – the oldest American higher-education institution in the Middle East - introduced his successor, John Waterbury, who became their head in January 1998, restoring their financial and academic health after the long Lebanese civil war. He retired as their President last July but continues to teach there. Before joining AUB he was for twenty years on the faculty of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. He recounted Mr. Waterbury’s distinguished career at Michigan and Columbia.amd at Aix-Marseilles in France.
The speaker recalled his address in 1978 to the Old Guard and having been brought up short by the acumen of his audience. He felt that educational developments were not receiving adequate study here, especially in government circles, and that we were virtually ignoring the potentially-disastrous effects of global warming in the Middle East. In a hundred years the area has changed from an agrarian, rural society with low literacy to a highly literate one whose people see the importance of higher education and no longer think of their prosperity in terms of oil and natural resources but in human resources and talent. Demand for education has skyrocketed but is of inferior quality and quantity. Including Iran, Israel and Turkey, the population is ca. 460 million of which Arabs total ca. 320 million. Of these, twenty percent are aged 15 to 24, i.e. over 90 million. Of these only ten percent receive higher education – 3 ½ million in the Arab world. As a growth area of high demand, institutions like AUB do not feel competition amongst educational institutions. But 40 of the 90 million eligibles are not being well-educated and feel disadvantaged.
Most such education is state-run and is still based on an outdated de-colonization model emanating from Nasser’s Egypt. Education is to build a new citizenry, not training to staff the emerging society’s economic and intellectual needs. Even Turkey forty years earlier showed the same pattern. Being overwhelmed by population growth, the system is unable to cope with very high rates of unemployment, where the better educated one is, the harder it is to find appropriate jobs. However an educated middle class was created – the parents of the 90 million adolescents are resentful of what is not available for their children and constitute a significant political factor. Two hundred-and-fifty universities with sometimes 200,000 nominal students provide sub-standard training and largely fictitious degrees. Appointments are political in nature; professors market their notes to augment their income. Furthermore, governments regard these institutions as hotbeds of disaffection and scatter them about into branches, thus negating the original aim of fostering national unity. Secret police infiltrate student ranks, having little to do but hear lectures. Research is almost nil. A kind of social contract existed wherein parents abjured politics and dissidence in exchange for higher education but they are increasingly unwilling to entrap their children that way.
One encouraging development has been the Arab Human Development Report which has attacked the inadequacy of education, gender policies and governments. Another development which might be positive, but often is not, is the explosive and crassly entrepreneurial entry of thoroughgoing marketeers into education whose objective is profit, not good education. Their shareholders are more important than the students. Yet, the speaker is hopeful. One reason is that American universities operating in the Middle East are required to have the same standards as at home. Unfortunately the speaker’s detailed account ran us to the wire and there was no time for questions and we had to adjourn at 11:30 AM.
Respectfully submitted,
John Frederick