Syria’s degree factories

Syria’s private universities are a problem. Many of them market themselves as centres of knowledge, talent and innovation: where the next generation of state-builders will be trained. The reality though is that too often they've become largely commercial enterprises, extracting money from students while offering little serious academic value. Their owners have benefited from licences granted with remarkable ease under the old regime - licenses which the new regime is only too happy to maintain. 

The Assad regime made higher education an instrument of political influence and economic patronage. Legislative Decree No 36 of 2001 opened the floodgates for private universities in Syria. Within a few years, dozens had appeared, many established under the auspices of former regime cronies.

It was so easy: secure a building, obtain a licence, and recruit a few prominent academic names for appearances. Demand was guaranteed given over-subscription to public universities, themselves academically depleted and in a shabby state.

Not much changed after the new government took charge. In January 2025, 29 private universities received official recognition, while nine in northern (formerly opposition-held) Syria were excluded and asked to submit further documentation. 

That decision offered a limited sign of seriousness about maintaining standards at private universities. The way that older, Assad-era universities were given a clean bill of health, however, suggests that there just wasn't a transparent and independent academic review of standards one would have expected. 

As it turned out, it wasn't the only thing missing. The collaborative learning techniques that have become staple in almost all top-ranked universities globally are largely absent in Syria. Also absent is access to data and research archives of the kind available to an average student in, say, Singapore. 

Laboratory-based research, another staple of even second-rate universities elsewhere, is rare at most private universities in Syria. Publication in reputable peer-reviewed journals is treated as a nice-to-have but not essential. Some private universities go as far as to discourage staff from publishing in competitive international journals given the time it would take them away from teaching (i.e. working their shifts), 

Similarly, technology-transfer units and research incubators, which could turn ideas into productive ventures, are also missing in action. Partnerships between academia and the private sectors, where they exist, take on bureaucratic and political significance hardly matched by commercial logic. It’s not at all surprising that the connection between what universities produce and what society and the economy actually want is growing ever wider.   

Private universities make little effort to disguise their for-profit ethos. Annual tuition fees range from about $1,800 for Media Studies-type courses to more than $11,000 for Engineering and Medicine. Of course, these prices are not backed up by a verifiable measure of teaching quality, research excellence, and graduate employability. Claims of “world-class quality” seldom extend beyond the glossy marketing brochures.

The government has proclaimed the cause of institutional reform. Reforming our universities should be a top priority. 

To that end, President Ahmad al-Sharaa could establish a genuinely independent academic accreditation authority operating outside the influence of the Ministry of Higher Education. This would give prospective students and parents a clearer idea of what they're buying into. 

His government could also mandate that every private university be required to make public its financial and academic records, including things like: how much profit it generates, graduate employment rates, and amount of original research.

Encouraging research partnerships between academics and the private sector is something the government should be doing. One way to do that is through tax and other incentives for businesses that locate their R&D departments in Syria. That should allow private universities to contribute to the economic engine of the nation beyond making already rich owners richer. 

And for universities that fail to modernise their curriculums, produce no serious research, and give students no discernible advantage in the work place, the answer is simple: shut them down.

At best, they're an expensive extension of secondary school. At worst, they're a degree factory producing the next generation of angry taxi driver. 

Young Syrians deserve better. It's time to get serious about higher education reform.