Syrian refugees in Jordan – From camps to campus

The United Nations recently registered its three millionth Syrian refugee. In this group and among the nearly seven million Syrians internally displaced is a population neglected and ignored: tens of thousands of university students and scholars.

Their situations are bleak.

Among the displaced and threatened are aspiring engineers, scientists and scholars of the arts. They have lost access not only to classrooms, but also to their livelihoods, homes and families.

Students who once thrived in university libraries and lecture halls now reside in under-resourced and overcrowded refugee camps and urban environments, with their pursuit of higher education a distant dream.

We must do more to help.

Without access to higher education, who will be the future teachers, doctors, lawyers and engineers of Syria when it is time to rebuild? How will the younger students remain motivated in their studies?

By failing to support the educational needs of Syria’s students and scholars now, we run the risk of a lost generation of leaders, with potentially devastating effects on Syria and the region.

Especially at a time when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant continues to wreak havoc in Syria and Iraq, the urgency of providing these displaced young people with hope and educational opportunities to eventually rebuild their society has become even more urgent.

They are the future of Syria.

Scholarships

The Institute of International Education, or IIE, is trying to help, grateful for the support of key partner organisations and universities.

While IIE’s Scholar Rescue Fund and IIE’s Syria Consortium for Higher Education in Crisis provide fellowships and scholarships to individual scholars and students, we are also conducting original research on needs within the region.

With support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, IIE and the University of California, Davis have teamed up to conduct fieldwork in the front-line hosting states of Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

Our goal is to convene the international community and lead meaningful dialogue on policy and programme recommendations for increasing Syrians’ access to higher education in these critical host countries, as well as internationally.

It is our hope that universities, governments, multilateral agencies and organisations will use these research findings to develop effective responses on the local, national and global levels.

One concrete, immediate example of action is ‘From Camps to Campus’, a programme that IIE will pilot starting Spring 2015, thanks to support from Jusoor and private donors.

It is a simple model. We will provide scholarships for Syrian university students in the Za’atari camp in Jordan – one of the world’s largest refugee camps and a symbol of the Syrian crisis – to complete their education at nearby universities.

The ‘From Camps to Campus’ pilot will focus on supporting students whose university education was cut short due to the conflict and who are studying in fields critical to refugee crisis response, such as education and public health.

Our programme will offer full tuition and transportation stipends, working closely with both local Jordanian universities and the Ministry of Higher Education. We will also provide scholarships to disadvantaged Jordanian students, recognising the need to support the communities that are doing so much to host Syrian refugees.

Scaling up

‘From Camps to Campus’ is small at the moment, with funds to support just four to five Syrian students and two Jordanian students over the next two-and-a-half years. However, we are optimistic about the project’s potential and believe that, with additional support, it can be scaled up and perhaps even replicated in countries like Turkey.

We are also encouraged to see similar and larger-scale commitments, such as a recent grant by the Saïd foundation in support of the UNHCR DAFI scholarships for Syrian university students in Jordan and Lebanon.

As we do this work, one image keeps coming to mind.

Our team visited Za’atari in June to meet camp officials and prospective students. When word got around that IIE was coming to talk about scholarships, hundreds of students lined the entrance to the camp. The thought of helping only very few of these individuals – bright, motivated and eager to learn more than anything else in the world – is heartbreaking.

We must do more, and we must do it together.

The IIE calls on governments, universities and NGOs to find solutions so that Syrian scholars can teach and Syrian students can learn, even in the midst of conflict and crisis. The need is great – in Jordan, in Lebanon, in Turkey and around the world.

Together, we can preserve the vital intellectual capital of Syria. We cannot give up on these young leaders. Syria needs them, and so does the world.

* Daniela Z Kaisth is vice-president, external affairs and IIE initiatives at the Institute of International Education. James R King is senior research and programme officer at the IIE Scholar Rescue Fund – IIE-SRF.