Posing as alien traits and doubts about their academic ability: universities

The explosion of higher education at any moment will be no less dangerous than the explosion in the port of Beirut. This is what several members of the Council of Higher Education warn, given the continuous proliferation of universities, stores that continue to expand in the regions in the hands of for-profit entrepreneurs and under political coverage. Today, none of these members know what happened to the “reform” decisions taken by the Council during the term of former Education Minister Akram Shuhayb against the raped and falsified universities that “still escape accountability to this day. today “, including the closure of branches and specialties without a license, the imposition of fines and the suspension of the reception of students. And avoid using unwarranted names. After contacting the embassies concerned to find out if the universities have ties to them, or if designations like “American”, “German”, “Canadian” and others do not go beyond commercial marketing and phishing. Were the decisions implemented or not? If implemented, why not publish it on the website of the Directorate General for Higher Education to avoid any further exploitation of students? What is the truth of the discourse on solving the violations of some universities?

Suddenly, the road stopped, according to a member of the Council, Abdul-Hassan Al-Husseini, and the Council of Higher Education and the technical committee that studies license files and the start of teaching were suspended. And “during his tenure, the Minister of Education Tareq Al-Majzoub did not invite the Council to meet only twice in 6 months, and the technical committee never met during this period.
The record of private universities and their affiliates had entered a new phase of organization, monitoring and scrutiny during the Shuhayeb state, especially after the scandal of the sale of falsified diplomas to civilians and military personnel was exposed in July 2018. According to Al-Husseini, the universities were divided into groups of 10 universities each, and subcommittees were formed to implement. Field visits were made to the branches and detailed reports on the strengths and weaknesses of each of them were prepared and received. referred to the Council of Higher Education for decision making
Al-Husseini is convinced that “all branches are of dubious academic ability, which explains how these branches choose the same homogeneous specializations, which do not require high-level educational staff, laboratories and expensive equipment, such as computer science or administration of companies “. He pointed to a loophole in Higher Education Law 285/2014 that allowed a legal person to obtain a license, “This point was exploited. And now those who have financial capacity for commercial companies and families use the name of the university in exchange for the money that is paid to each student, or each boss ”. Al-Husseini believed that “the problem is in politics and the role of successive ministers, and also in the administration. As the Secretary of the General Directorate of Higher Education is not qualified to carry out a work of this magnitude, as evidence that it does not fulfill its simplest duties, such as delivering the minutes of the sessions to the members of the Council of Higher Education. The third problem is with people who choose unlicensed universities because of a prior conception and design, in the context of the ease of obtaining a degree from universities that do not establish strict conditions for enrollment.
But what is remarkable is what al-Husseini said about the dozens of majors that were opened by “old” universities, which obtained verbal licenses to start teaching from the former general manager, Ahmed al-Jamal, to make arrangements for them later, And this exceeded the powers of the CEO! “The strangest thing is to send universities – shops to students to blackmail the Ministry of Education and pressure it to match the degrees.”

Universities: Stores use students to blackmail the Ministry of Education and pressure it to match degrees

As for the call of the Council of Higher Education to approve agreements for violating universities that violated regulations and laws and overthrew the quality of education, they rise, according to al-Husseini, to the level of criminality. Therefore, “no arrangement should be made for universities, not even for graduate, master’s and doctoral students.
Council Member, President of the University of the Holy Spirit – Kaslik, Father George Hobeika said that the state “requires a mechanism to implement the decisions made by the Council of Higher Education, away from political and partisan balances, friends and acquaintances, and to avoid any explosion. ” With them, although there should be no discussion about decisions related to the closure of branches or unlicensed jurisdictions, for example.
As for a member of the technical committee, “the situation is dire and the solution is to appoint an original director general of higher education,” indicating that the decisions are still in the drawer of the director general (the director general of Education Fadi Yarq) who “does not have time to devote himself to the higher education record and is not enthusiastic about the subject.” . He pointed out that the auxiliary committees that were formed in Ayyam Shaheeb, in addition to the technical committee, were not legal, like the emergency committee and others. He noted that the technical committee refused to renew the license for one of the university institutes that cooperates with the French state and is honorably headed by the governor of the Banque du Liban Riad Salameh, but the former Minister of Education Marwan Hamadeh accepted the renewal.
The former adviser to Minister Shuhayeb for Higher Education Affairs, Walid Safi, explained: “We rejected any transgression of the academic technical committee, and the formation of the auxiliary committees was to keep up with the work, and the emergency committee was the one that made the field visits to universities to review their records ”. But this path has stopped, and today a state of chaos and loss prevails. In this sector, given the lack of political will to carry out the reform, with the exception of the settlement kitchen of some universities, which is pressing so that their branches and specializations are not closed without a license, noting that these branches were established in contravention of Higher Education Law 285/2014. Safi was surprised by the secrecy when discussing the decisions against the universities. How this information should be published, in accordance with the Law on the Right to Information. And he warned against the manipulation of specializations such as engineering and medicine without facing the opinion of the Trade Unions of Engineers and Doctors on professional conditions and the study of the local and regional labor market.

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