The Crisis of Lebanese Higher Education or the Crisis of the Lebanese Political System?

ABSTRACT

Lebanon is suffering from a severe economic-financial crisis that the World Bank ranks in the top 10, possibly top 3, most severe crises episodes globally since the mid-nineteenth century. This turmoil has resulted from years of corruption, mismanagement, and neoliberal policies, which put the whole political system in the bottleneck. All sectors in the country and especially, higher education, are enduring critical problems. This piece of writing intends to describe the collapsed situation of Lebanese higher education as well as the conditions engendering this breakdown. In discussing this issue, we focus on the different reasons that let private universities to redress the crisis differently than the public university. However, we suppose that this collapsing situation is not a momentary event; however, on the contrary, it is a case that expresses the crisis of the Lebanese political system. Lebanese higher education system has its share of mischievous policies. Nevertheless, the crisis impacted the public sector the most.