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Michel Mawad: Lebanon’s Education Sector to Witness Five Lean Years

The president of the Lebanese American University in Beirut (LAU), Dr. Michel Mawad.
The president of the Lebanese American University in Beirut (LAU), Dr. Michel Mawad.
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Michel Mawad: Lebanon’s Education Sector to Witness Five Lean Years

The president of the Lebanese American University in Beirut (LAU), Dr. Michel Mawad.
The president of the Lebanese American University in Beirut (LAU), Dr. Michel Mawad.

The president of the Lebanese American University in Beirut (LAU), Dr. Michel Mawad, said that the education sector in the country would witness five lean years, as a result of the financial and economic crisis and the lack of resources.

In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat, Mawad pointed to the danger of the human capital flight, which he said would take several years to compensate.

He stressed that brain drain and the loss of educational energy in the higher education sector would have long-term repercussions and require many years to address.

“At the university, we face many difficulties, and we thank God that we overcome them one by one,” Mawad said.

“The great difficulty that people do not notice is the brain drain from Lebanon and the university. Today, we have lost between 20 to 25 percent of doctors who have specializations from abroad. This affects the education of students in medicine, pharmacy or nursing…” he warned.

In addition to the loss of human and educational capacity in the higher education sector, which Mawad deems “harmful to the sector,” he noted that many of the students could no longer afford the tuition fees because the purchasing power has decreased by about 15 times.

“We are doing our best to bring in the funds to retain the students. This priority stems from the fact that the Lebanese University has become almost absent, forcing students to resort to small businesses,” Mawad emphasized, pointing to the risk of the desperate youth being dragged into extremist organizations due to the spread of poverty in the country.

He stressed that based on LAU’s determination to promote the advancement and support the youth, the university has provided last year $70 million in scholarships and around $100 million for the current 2022-2023 academic year.

This has led to an increase in the number of students from 8,360 in 2021 to 8,500 students this year.

Mawad underlined the need for funds in US dollars to cover the university’s expenses.

“We buy fuel in US dollars; we used to spend $1.3 million annually, but now our budget is $8.7 million in expenses for electricity, internet, water and heating,” he said, stressing that the LAU is a private, non-profit organization, “but we are forced to secure the alternative to what the state could not provide, and this puts pressure on us.”

The president of the LAU revealed that the university’s deficit in the past two years amounted to $72 million, forcing it to withdraw the equivalent amount from the endowment in the United States to cover its expenses and enable professors to continue their mission.

“We have reached the stage of turning off the lights in some buildings, not only because of the high cost of diesel but also because of its shortage,” he stated.

Despite all the challenges, Mawad said that the university has kept pace with modern scientific developments, and has taken the lead in launching new specializations in artificial intelligence, nanoengineering, and robotics, in addition to the opening of modern laboratories in the faculties of medicine and engineering.

Other important achievements include the opening of the University Medical Center in Jounieh, known as Saint John Hospital, in continuation of the university's mission to interact with its community and promote its advancement.

According to Mawad, Lebanon’s exit from its crisis depended on time and liquidity. “We are seeking in various ways to find foreign sources of funding,” he noted.

The LAU has launched an online educational plan, but Mawad said that the Ministry of Education has not yet approved the granting of online degrees.”

“We are working with a company to market our online specializations for students outside Lebanon, and we tell all students who study online that this certificate is not recognized in Lebanon, but only abroad”, he continued.

In addition, the LAU has offices in New York since 2013 and now is starting to convert them into a university campus due to the huge demand by non-American students, who wish to pursue their education in the US, Mawad noted.

“We are also seeking to repeat this experience in Arab countries, and we have hired companies to study the market in Saudi Arabia, and we have been informed that there are opportunities in Riyadh, and an option in Baghdad,” he told Asharq Al-Awsat.

LAU is seeking to expand in the Arab region and build a university campus in Baghdad, during the next three years. This will include campuses and colleges for medical sciences.

“The university is growing... We are not politicized or follow a specific religion, and we do not differentiate between students. We use all our energies to educate our students and allow them to have the best work opportunities in Lebanon and abroad,” Mawad underlined.

In light of the weak government supervision that led to the spread of random universities and the issuance of fake degrees, the LAU president insisted that well-established non-profit universities such as AUB, LAU, USJ, and others, have put among their priority maintaining high-quality education.

All funds received “are used to cover expenses, develop the university's premises, laboratories, scientific research centers, and also help students,” he stated.

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Interviews

Goldrich to Asharq Al-Awsat: No US Withdrawal from Syria

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat
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Goldrich to Asharq Al-Awsat: No US Withdrawal from Syria

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich has told Asharq Al-Awsat that the US does not plan to withdraw its forces from Syria.

The US is committed to “the partnership that we have with the local forces that we work with,” he said.

Here is the full text of the interview.

Question: Mr. Goldrich, thank you so much for taking the time to sit with us today. I know you are leaving your post soon. How do you assess the accomplishments and challenges remaining?

Answer: Thank you very much for the chance to talk with you today. I've been in this position for three years, and so at the end of three years, I can see that there's a lot that we accomplished and a lot that we have left to do. But at the beginning of a time I was here, we had just completed a review of our Syria policy, and we saw that we needed to focus on reducing suffering for the people in Syria. We needed to reduce violence. We needed to hold the regime accountable for things that are done and most importantly, from the US perspective, we needed to keep ISIS from reemerging as a threat to our country and to other countries. At the same time, we also realized that there wouldn't be a solution to the crisis until there was a political process under resolution 2254, so in each of these areas, we've seen both progress and challenges, but of course, on ISIS, we have prevented the reemergence of the threat from northeast Syria, and we've helped deal with people that needed to be repatriated out of the prisons, and we dealt with displaced people in al-Hol to reduce the numbers there. We helped provide for stabilization in those parts of Syria.

Question: I want to talk a little bit about the ISIS situation now that the US troops are still there, do you envision a timeline where they will be withdrawn? Because there were some reports in the press that there is a plan from the Biden administration to withdraw.

Answer: Yeah. So right now, our focus is on the mission that we have there to keep ISIS from reemerging. So I know there have been reports, but I want to make clear that we remain committed to the role that we play in that part of Syria, to the partnership that we have with the local forces that we work with, and to the need to prevent that threat from reemerging.

Question: So you can assure people who are saying that you might withdraw, that you are remaining for the time being?

Answer: Yes, and that we remain committed to this mission which needs to continue to be pursued.

Question: You also mentioned the importance of humanitarian aid. The US has been leading on this. Are you satisfied with where you are today on the humanitarian front in Syria?

Answer: We remain committed to the role that we play to provide for humanitarian assistance in Syria. Of the money that was pledged in Brussels, we pledged $593 million just this past spring, and we overall, since the beginning of the conflict, have provided $18 billion both to help the Syrians who are inside of Syria and to help the refugees who are in surrounding countries. And so we remain committed to providing that assistance, and we remain keenly aware that 90% of Syrians are living in poverty right now, and that there's been suffering there. We're doing everything we can to reduce the suffering, but I think where we would really like to be is where there's a larger solution to the whole crisis, so Syrian people someday will be able to provide again for themselves and not need this assistance.

Question: And that's a perfect key to my next question. Solution in Syria. you are aware that the countries in the region are opening up to Assad again, and you also have the EU signaling overture to the Syrian regime and Assad. How do you deal with that?

Answer: For the United States, our policy continues to be that we will not normalize with the regime in Syria until there's been authentic and enduring progress on the goals of resolution 2254, until the human rights of the Syrian people are respected and until they have the civil and human rights that they deserve. We know other countries have engaged with the regime. When those engagements happen, we don't support them, but we remind the countries that are engaged that they should be using their engagements to push forward on the shared international goals under 2254, and that whatever it is that they're doing should be for the sake of improving the situation of the Syrian people.

Question: Let's say that all of the countries decided to talk to Assad, aren’t you worried that the US will be alienated in the process?

Answer: The US will remain true to our own principles and our own policies and our own laws, and the path for the regime in Syria to change its relationship with us is very clear, if they change the behaviors that led to the laws that we have and to the policies that we have, if those behaviors change and the circumstances inside of Syria change, then it's possible to have a different kind of relationship, but that's where it has to start.

Question: My last question to you before you leave, if you have to pick one thing that you need to do in Syria today, what is it that you would like to see happening today?

Answer: So there are a number of things, I think that will always be left and that there are things that we will try to do, to try to make them happen. We want to hold people accountable in Syria for things that have happened. So even today, we observed something called the International Day for victims of enforced disappearances, there are people that are missing, and we're trying to draw attention to the need to account for the missing people. So our step today was to sanction a number of officials who were responsible for enforced disappearances, but we also created something called the independent institution for missing persons, and that helps the families, in the non-political way, get information on what's happened. So I'd like to see some peace for the families of the missing people. I'd like to see the beginning of a political process, there hasn't been a meeting of the constitutional committee in two years, and I think that's because the regime has not been cooperating in political process steps. So we need to change that situation. And I would, of course, like it's important to see the continuation of the things that we were talking about, so keeping ISIS from reemerging and maintaining assistance as necessary in the humanitarian sphere. So all these things, some of them are ongoing, and some of them remain to be achieved. But the Syrian people deserve all aspects of our policy to be fulfilled and for them to be able to return to a normal life.