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July 2001

The primacy of higher education





Minister of higher education Hassan Risheh - the ministry with responsibility for pre-university students is run separately - is convinced of the importance of tertiary education to Syria's economic future. "Investment in human resources development (HRD) plays a very important contribution to building a sound economy," he says, "and to building an economy which is able to compete in an era when we are seeing globalization all over the world and the opening of economies all around us. But investment in HRD means a complete reform of the system, which is why we are not only talking now about economic reform but also about educational reform in Syria."
In the context of education, the essence of this reform appears to be its new emphasis on quality rather than quantity. The provision of basic education is seen as a virtual birthright in Syria, with free and compulsory education for all up to the age of about 15, and with basic education accounting for about 10% of the total budget, according to Risheh. This in turn has laid the foundations for a society with quite a good literacy rate and with strong standards of basic tuition across a wide range of subjects. The independent consultancy Syrian Consulting Bureau puts the adult literacy rate among individuals aged over 15 at 67%.
What the Syrian education system has not done, however, is to encourage a sufficiently large proportion of teenagers to pursue further education. Risheh's ministry is only allocated about 3% of Syria's annual budget for investment in HRD. The result is what Risheh describes as the "upside-down pyramid of the labour force in Syrian society". He explains that, unusually, Syria is a country in which there are a disproportionate number of highly trained doctors and engineers compared with basic technicians, engineers, nurses and paramedics. "So we need to have a much stronger focus on technical colleges," he says.
Perhaps the clearest example of the relationship between economic reform and the transformation of the Syrian educational system has been the recent legislative proposal allowing for the establishment of private universities, a policy that would have been anathema to the Nasserists of the 1960s.
Risheh explains that the law on private universities is now in the final stages of discussion in the parliament, and that when passed it will allow for the establishment of top-quality institutions in Syria regardless of their geographical provenance. "Because we are keeping quality in mind, we would welcome the establishment of foreign universities in Syria, either on their own or on a joint venture basis with the government," Risheh says. "Private universities will bring two very clear benefits. First of all they will allow us to enlarge the opportunities we can offer to more students. And second it will provide us with technical assistance from the more advanced universities in Europe and the US." While the mention of support from the US might raise some eyebrows, Risheh says that co-operation in education has been immune to the broader political disagreements between the US and Syria.
Risheh says that another priority at his ministry is to inject much more of a private-sector mentality across the board in education, which means paying much closer attention to US and UK practices such as college rankings. It also means establishing institutions that can play a role in fostering a more entrepreneurial spirit among young Syrian students. An example is the imminent opening of a business school in Syria supported by EU funding.
Risheh says that Syria needs to invest heavily in the entire information technology (IT) field. Already, he says that Microsoft, for one, has demonstrated its faith in the potential of Syria by using it as one of the bases for its Arabization programme, but he feels that the country has great potential in the development of its IT sector.
Syria's initial response to the arrival of the internet and e-commerce was fundamentally suspicious, although that has now changed. Today, there are two main internet service providers. One of these is managed by the state-owned Syrian Telecommunications Establishment, and the other by the Syrian Computer Society, which was chaired by the late president Hafez Al-Assad. In order to accelerate the process of internet penetration, however, the government is now completing what is described as the "national IT backbone" in co-operation with the private sector.
In line with Syria's technology ambitions, another important initiative on the drawing board at Risheh's ministry is the ambitious development of a technopolis free trade area aimed at promoting investments in key areas of the new economy such as IT and biotechnology.
The cost will be several billion dollars, but Risheh says that as it is an international project that happens to be located in Syria it ought to attract high levels of international investment.






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