05 February 2007

BEIRUT: The American University of Technology, the American University of Science and Technology, C&E American University, Business and Computer University are just a few of about 20 "universities" in Lebanon that have one thing in common they're not universities at all. They are colleges or technical schools which were given licenses with little or no prior investigation or follow-up to ascertain whether they are qualified to operate as institutions of higher learning.

In 2000, during a Cabinet session headed by then-Premier Salim Hoss and in the presence of then-Education Minister Mohammad Youssef Beydoun, a decree was passed granting licenses to a long list of new colleges. President Emile Lahoud signed the decree.

The colleges and many others that have been given licenses over the years continue to operate as universities, despite the fact that they are unrecognized as such by genuine institutions both inside and outside Lebanon. Students graduating from these institutions regularly face problems when presenting their degrees at other institutions to continue their education or applying for a job. They are often told that their degree is meaningless because the institution is either unrecognized or unaccredited.

Politicians disagree over who is ultimately to blame for the licensing of so many new universities.

While Beydoun acknowledged his role, he insisted in an interview that he only gave the green light for them to operate as technical schools.

"I gave licenses to these institutes as technological schools because I felt that Lebanon needed them," he explained. "We don't want a high level of unemployment because we don't have colleges and only have universities that people can't afford."

"And I gave licenses to reputable schools that were collaborating with academies in Canada and France," the former minister added, insisting that it is the Cabinet's responsibility to follow up on the status of the institutions to determine "whether they are meeting academic requirements."

"I told [current Education Minister] Khaled Qabbani to make sure this was happening," he added.

"At the end of the day, it is Cabinet's decision whether to approve the licenses or not. But just like the Central Bank has an independent committee to annually check a bank's requirements and approve it, so should the education sector. It is the Cabinet's responsibility to have an annual investigation. I told Qabbani that he should do this."

While some point to Beydoun as the person responsible for the mess, others blame another former education minister, Abdel-Rahim Mrad.

The Cabinet session that approved the licenses took place a few months before Mrad took office. According to one academic who is close to the issue but did not want to be identified, "academic laws were blatantly flaunted" while Mrad was education minister.

"The fact that he, as a minister, opened his own university is enough," the academic said, in reference to the Lebanese International University, which Mrad licensed during his term in office. "At the time, Mrad was heavily backed by his allies [the Syrian officials who ultimately controlled Lebanese politics at the time] and he overstepped many committees and bodies created specifically to study these issues.

"He had his own empire and students were accepted into universities when they had no qualifications whatsoever. Decrees would be passed for technical schools under a different name than the one under which it currently operates," the academic told The Daily Star. "He allowed these institutes to flourish. They were allowed to operate as universities way after they were given the licenses as technical schools. There is a committee which is part of the Education Ministry but which is still an autonomous body. This committee, by law, should be consulted when it comes to anything to do with higher education. It is a consultative body and its decisions are not binding, but it is mandatory to consult the members of the committee."

The committee is composed of representatives from each university in Lebanon "and a minister cannot propose a decree to Cabinet without first getting the approval of this committee."

"Mrad completely ignored the committee and its advice," he said. "Moreover, when the applications from these institutes would arrive, they would be missing very important information and documents. During Mrad's term, the files would miraculously acquire documents after the licenses were given and the files would slowly be built up."

However, in a separate interview with The Daily Star, Mrad insisted that the licenses were issued for the schools to operate as universities prior to his taking over the ministry.  According to him, "the first time this can of worms was opened was when [then-Prime Minister Rafik] Hariri wanted to open a technical school in Sidon. He collaborated with France and [the Lebanese University] and the school became one of LU's campuses. It is not a university-level institute. Studying there only constitutes three years.

"Then, Hariri opened Hariri Canadian University, which is also a technical school. That was when other colleges demanded that they be given licenses and students became confused as to whether they had degrees from technical schools or universities," he added.

"The only license that I approved was to open my university," Mrad insisted, adding that this took place "only after I changed the name from Lebanese Syrian University to Lebanese International University."

According to Mrad, part of the problem stems from the fact that institutes can be classified as universities even when they have only one strong faculty, which in these cases was the business faculty. "However, institutes are using this major to operate many other specializations in order to become more of a university-level institute with various faculties," he said.

"An institute needs more than three faculties to have the right to ask for a university license," he added.

The former minister also blamed those institutes for attracting students by offering low tuition fees.

"They are acting like fish or vegetable traders," he said. "This is really shameful."

Mrad called for the establishment of a pact among all of the country's universities to abide by the Education Ministry's decisions.

Regardless of who is to blame for the presence of so many trade schools that bill themselves as universities, all politicians agree that there is a need to streamline the existing system of licensing and to better protect consumers of higher education.

Now, the task of remedying this problem has fallen on the shoulders of current Education Minister Khaled Qabbani. In an interview with The Daily Star, Qabbani said that the presence of so many self-proclaimed "universities" constitutes a major problem  that is affecting Lebanon's reputation abroad as a country with high academic standards.

"Lebanon's education has taken a big hit in the past 10 years - whether pre-university years or after," Qabbani stressed. "Its reputation has already been affected because of the past 10 years' practices."

"First of all, we can say there are more than 40 universities and technical colleges in Lebanon - all this number for a country as small as Lebanon. This is quite a number for its population and size," he said.

"Since 1996, these colleges have opened and thousands of students have graduated from them, but they cannot be counted as university students," he added.

This phenomenon is not only detrimental to Lebanon's higher education system, but also "stops these students' futures and affects their chances of finding jobs," the minister said.

"This sector is linked directly with the economy and social status of a country. There is a crucial link between education and the country's need for professionals ... We are building a nation ... a nation of future professionals."

As colleges, these institutions are fine, according to Qabbani, but the problem is that they "now operate as universities, without investigation and without these colleges having the minimum requirements according to academic standards or education laws."

"No one bothered to investigate whether these institutions had the minimum requirements to provide students with their educational needs or whether Lebanon really needed this number of universities," he said. More importantly, these licenses did not specify that there are conditions under which the colleges should operate or whether they had the academic and technical standards stipulated in education laws, specifically the Higher Education Law, which was passed in 1961 to deal with such matters.

"It was passed 50 years ago," Qabbani said, "and it really no longer suits this era. There have been countless developments in this long period of time, whether in academic standards, technological developments, social developments, teaching standards, university atmospheres or laws, etc."

"There is chaos in higher education, since the government had been totally absent in overseeing this very important sector," he said.

Exacerbating the situation and making the problem "more complicated," according to the minister, is the fact that "these schools have opened in various areas across the country without first studying the needs of these areas and they don't even have the minimum requirements that would make them a university."

"This includes the buildings or campuses themselves, qualified teachers, academic standards and much more," he explained.

"This has really led to a wrong picture being portrayed regarding Lebanon's level of education and its higher education sector," Qabbani said.

In Lebanon, students can find out which universities are recognized locally by checking the Education Ministry's Web site. Lebanon has a "League of Universities," currently made up of 19 schools whose degrees are recognized by all institutions inside the country as having university status. However, membership in the league is no guarantee that the institution will be recognized as a university in countries abroad.

According to Qabbani, Hariri Canadian University was recently added to the league "because it deserves it."

Because of the chaotic state of licensing in Lebanese higher education, consumers currently have no easy way of knowing what they are getting in return for their tuition dollars.

"This is what I've been trying to fix in the higher education sector," said Qabbani.

"We have created a law to organize this sector in an attempt to study and follow the developments that have taken place since 1961," he added. "We can modernize the 1961 law, creating a higher level for higher education and paving the way for true universities that can compete worldwide and excel, where universities can provide an academic message in an era where excellence is the name for success."

The new law would place conditions and regulations on universities and colleges in Lebanon.

The ministry, along with a governmental committee formed of professionals and academics whose by-laws have been drafted in a way that guarantees autonomy from political interference and decisions, will be studying this law during a workshop to be held in the "near future," Qabbani said.

It will then be taken to Cabinet and Parliament. However, judging by the current situation in the country with Cabinet missing six ministers and Parliament unable to hold an extraordinary session because of disagreements between the government and the opposition this situation may be stuck in limbo, like the rest of the country. In a crisis-management effort, the minister and the league are studying students' degrees to see which ones they are able to recognize and help. They are also re-evaluating all the technical schools to see which ones meet the requirements to bill themselves as universities.

"I have received many, many demands from the various colleges and technical schools to be officially named as universities. I am studying every case very deeply, slowly and carefully," Mrad said.

"The league and I are being very strict before we give out any more licenses," he added. "We have to protect Lebanon's reputation in education and regain this country's previous role in the region, its status as a center for excellence in higher education this is what Lebanon once was."

According to Waddah Nasr, associate provost at the American University of Beirut, "Lebanon's education system is its savior."

"We don't have oil and natural resources," he said. "We have education an excellent education system. Even now, in the region, universities have already become very conservative in accepting Lebanese degrees. But hopefully, the damage that has been caused can be contained." - Additional reporting by Rola Haddad