In spite of undeniable realities of human capital erosion and structural weakening as well as moral and financial bankruptcy of the increasingly unequal education sector, the narrow but extremely important education segment of Lebanon’s top universities represents a counterfactual to the defeatist sentiment that local education is desolate and degraded beyond short or medium term perspectives of recovery.

Moreover, examples of resilience in crisis, such as the example of the American University of Beirut (AUB) – one of the region’s highest reputed academic institutions, validate the notion that Lebanon cannot be fully comprehended when approached as a naturally diverse but tiny territory (0.002 percent of the world’s surface) with a socially diverse but micro-sized population (estimated 0.07 percent of world population), 90 percent dysfunctional institutions, and an organizationally 99 percent deficient polity.

Rather, with the studious Lebanon of ardent learning and the literary Lebanon of prophets and poets at the forefront, the cultural refresher course and civilizational lesson of the year 2024 is that there are multiple variations of the Lebanon of minds. This intangible and yet historically remarkable iteration of the national polity is one that cannot be bombed into submission and stripped of dignity by invasion.

The events of the past few months, while the Lebanese polity was still deeply enmeshed in the throes of war, show how the spatial and operational advantages of AUB, an educational institution that like its home country was tested time and again by adversity, played out under pressure.

According to AUB Provost Zaher Dawy, the university entered 2024 while still in the process of recovering from the shocks of previous years, namely the economic crisis, Covid, and the Beirut Port blast. Actively recovering from those disruptions, AUB continued to advance in its projects and initiatives throughout the first half of last year, including a very strong student recruitment cycle, despite the uncertainty and safety concerns created by the Gaza conflict escalations and altercations involving Israel. 

“Student and faculty recruitment last year were promising. Very interestingly, [something] which I cannot explain fully, our student recruitment cycle was at a record high in terms of number of applications for students who would join this September,” Dawy tells Executive in an interview at the end of October.

Enrollment by new undergraduate students who were accepted by AUB and confirmed their attendance for the fall 2024 term, rose to about 2050 to 2100, a significant departure from the first year of the economic crisis and aftermath of the Beirut Port Explosion when enrollment regressed by some 25 percent over a single year, from about 1,850 in 2019 to 1,400 who newly entered the university in the fall semester of 2020.

Enrollments into the fall semester of 2024 showed similar trends for graduate and undergraduate programs, signaling a U-shaped recovery from the trough of recruitment seen during the acute economic crisis phase. Forward looking optimism last year also translated into very active faculty recruitment of over 70 new local and international faculty members.

“The new students started classes on August 26 and the total student population, which was around 8200 in the 23-24 [academic] year, rose to close to 8600,” Dawy notes, adding that the total student body size, being composed of newly and previously enrolled cohorts of active learners, was still below the immediate pre-crisis phase.

Both student and faculty recruitment for the 2024-25 academic year were not only so abundant that it surprised even the university’s administration but also astonishingly impervious to immediate brain drain pressures. The resilience of enrollment numbers in the face of the war was to a large part because students had been attending classes and settling in before the middle of September. “When you are four weeks into your fall term, it is not easy to move anywhere,” Dawy opines.

According to him, AUB from the first escalation of Israeli hostilities was immediately responsive to the disrupted living conditions and safety concerns of students and faculty. The administration made provisions for internal displacement and external travels but also undertook efforts to make studies on campus reconvene quickly. “The main focus [of AUB’s support] was on academic wellbeing, mental health, and accommodation,” he says, additionally highlighting that AUB has a much-tested academic continuity framework which defines how the institution works in times of crisis.

In the middle of the fall semester, student body resilience was reflected in the rapidity of students returning to campus life. As daily rates of student presence on the main campus rushed from 900 in the first week of in-person return in the middle of October to 1,500 in the second week and around 2,100 towards the end of the month.   

Irrespective of this testimony to the importance and value that AUB students place on their attendance and campus experiences, there are indications that the painful wartime traumas will not be without impact on overall number of students in the coming terms. As Dawy concedes, starting from the spring term of 2025, some students may review their choice of university based on worsening influences of either safety fears or further deteriorated economic circumstances, or both.

Rethinking future human capital

Whereas AUB is an intrinsic component of today’s socially stratified and historically fragmented field of education made in Lebanon, no observer can overlook the university’s importance for the real and financial economy, as a place where many noted bankers, entrepreneurs, medical practitioners, engineers, designers and marketers have acquired their education.

During an informal meeting in a Beirut jazz garden before Israel’s unleashing of open war, a veteran Lebanese practitioner in international development finance institutions told Executive that the Gaza conflict was indeed a portend of educational alarm. “During conflicts, the poor are the worst off in terms of education attainment, but unless policy makers are sensitized to this and want to make a difference, I don’t think much will happen in terms of education reform,” said the expert on condition of not being cited by name. He added, with a sigh of exasperation, “The political system here needs to understand that one of the most precious [economic] values is human capital of the Lebanese.”

With dire needs for a new generation of female and male economic leaders and pioneers visible on the horizons of country and region, universities such as AUB are necessary platforms from which to work towards successes in developing a sustainable future economy that can be anchored on a just social contract. Provost Dawy says the university is fully embracing this mission, and doing so ever more after witnessing the pain of economic crises and conflicts that the country has suffered since 2019. “At AUB and AUBMC (formerly known as AUB hospital, ed.), we are everyday about building human capital and at the same time caring and healing. To our mind, these are the two prerequisites for any good future and this is why we feel that our role is so central to the future of Lebanon,” he emphasizes.

From this perspective, it is also very noteworthy how the long episode of national liquidity drains and socioeconomic turbulences has impacted AUB’s structure of financing the studies of current student cohorts. According to Dawy, close to 25 percent of students in the 2023-24 academic year were in situations of receiving full tuition support by either an external fund or the institution and paying zero tuition themselves. Another 40 percent of students enjoyed partial tuition support. That left only a, although sizeable, minority of remaining students to pay AUB’s full and by local standards very considerable tuition fees. Having a large proportion of the student body receive full funding under a merit-based system has become a very significant target for AUB, Dawy says: “This is essential for the overall fabric of the university that you want to have”.

Fundraising efforts and the building of networks with partner organizations are prominent on the minds of the university’s leadership, as shown in many examples during the term of current AUB President Fadlo Khoury, the latest of which was a 40-day tour across several continents that he embarked on while Lebanon was still witnessing daily warfare.

Needed: good policies, good examples, and new icons

Leading by example is a mark of distinction on all tiers of education systems. Following AUB’s example of investments in its academic quality and in its credo of raising global citizens of their country, region, and world might be a way forward for providers of education on all tiers of Lebanese private and public education systems toward generating human capital more equitably.

Yet despite AUB’s commendable efforts at expanding their social scope, no single university in Lebanon can impose national policy for reshaping the fragmented national education systems and achieve greater epistemic equality against the strong currents of under-funding and institutional deficiencies. What impresses as a testimony to the resilience of made-in-Lebanon education approaches, is rather how AUB has recently been crafting a new gem of education – that is still somewhat hidden from public attention – among the vistas of a renowned vacation island. 

The Cypriot town of Paphos sports a dense village core that is equipped with touristy trappings from seniors-friendly cafes to a hip handicrafts market. The old town overlooks an appealing string of sandy beaches. At first impression, it is a typical Eastern Mediterranean beach vacation destination with a bonus feature of antique sites, a place that has been sustaining itself for decades on its appeal to, mainly European, sun, sea, and culture seekers. But when AUB identified Paphos as the location best suited among several options for its first campus outside of Lebanon, it found a most welcoming host.

AUB Mediterraneo first opened in September 2023 but inaugurated its permanent home, on a converged picturesque and hyper-smart campus with 14,000 square-meter (sqm) built-up space and additional 9,000 sqm of parking, with apparently well-deserved pomp and circumstance in the first week of September 2024.

The campus, which hosts 25 research laboratories, has been completed last summer and is fully operational and complete, except for a sports facility that is under construction. The university moved to the new location after one year of operations in a temporary abode, a highly functional facility built a few years ago as an innovation center and provided by the city of Paphos to AUB Mediterraneo for a nominal fee, explains AUB Mediterraneo Rector Wassim El Hajj.

At its important milestone of inaugurating the permanent campus, AUB Mediterraneo could welcome almost 100 new students from 26 different countries (with Lebanese students accounting for approximately 40 percent), almost twice its entire population of 53 students from 12 countries in the 23-24 academic year. Notably, the first student cohort in 2023 had included Lebanese coming from Lebanon as well as the Gulf region alongside seven Jordanian and five Cypriot students, thus comprising numerous students from AUB’s historic clientele who would not have enrolled in Beirut due to reported episodes of unrest in Lebanon during the 2010s and early 2020s.

Another measurable number denoting the interest of prospective students and their families was the receipt of 1,199 applications for the 2024-2025 academic year, consisting of 944 undergraduate and 255 graduate applications, with an acceptance rate of approximately 60 percent. The number of received applications approximately doubled between the first and second years of AUB Mediterraneo operations.

Diligence, serendipity, hurdles

According to Hajj, the development of the top-ranked Lebanese university’s first overseas campus is not just the fulfillment of a strategic dream but also the fruit of a serendipitous merging of visions of the Lebanese academic institution and the municipality of Paphos, which equipped the coastal town with the trappings of a smart city. “It has in recent years moved from a village to a city with good infrastructure, that is clean and has beautiful resorts, [but also a city] where innovation is happening. We like to be here in this environment and grow together,” Hajj tells Executive while still situated in the temporary campus during my curiosity-driven exploratory visit in late spring of 2024.

The strategic ambition to expand AUB into an international satellite location goes back to 2016 when incoming president Fadlo Khoury (see interview with Executive here) put the plan on the agenda. But it was the impetus of early concerns over Lebanon’s economic health in 2019 that motivated AUB leadership to move the overseas campus to the top of the project queue and commission a well-known international consultancy to actively seek a suitable location by evaluating education destinations in the Arabian Gulf and five countries around the Mediterranean.

“The idea was not to go far away but have another source where students can go,” Hajj explains. While AUB’s due diligence process was still under way, the mayor of Paphos reached out to AUB under his vision for developing the city, and the successful match was made. “We connected in this way, which was not really planned. We were thinking in this way, he was thinking in this way, and we connected,” he adds. 

The two partners of municipality and academic institution agreed that the former’s contribution would be in the form of a 100-year low-cost land lease and the latter’s contribution would be in bringing its manpower and expertise to the city. Project details were discussed in 2021 and Hajj relocated to Paphos as project director in August of that year, at a time when no other facet of the academic dream was yet materially in place.

From the moment of reaching the agreement with the municipality of Paphos and Hajj’s move into the city, AUB Mediterraneo’s structures had to be adjusted in order to meet Cypriot and EU legal and academic requirements and thus come to a confluence of academic cultures between the liberal and legal traditions of American universities and the European public university-themed path to scholarly excellence.

According to Haji, hurdles soon emerged due to legal stipulations for establishing a private university. The US-practices based operating model of AUB is outside of the for-profit model practiced by other private universities in Cyprus. Having a mode of operations more akin to a public university than a private one, the AUB team needed to acquire much administrative knowledge on the requirements and process of opening in Cyprus.

Substantial legal and massive advocacy efforts were also needed to gain acceptance of the university’s system of governance – under Cypriot law, university officials are elected instead of appointed and AUB Mediterraneo can be owned by AUB but has to be self-governed – and succeed in adjustments of laws with regard to the status of tuition receipts and the applied tax regulations.

On the side of offered courses, AUB Mediterraneo and its academic programs (initially five undergraduate and two graduate programs) had to achieve Cypriot accreditation from Cypriot and EU-level evaluators on a very tight schedule. The institution got evaluated on 14 different applications. On the side of all this, there was the construction of a campus to oversee, nitty-gritty of a new operation to solve, and awareness of a to European perceptions newly minted university to build.  

When the first moment of successful creation arrived in September 2023, it was rewarding for Hajj to know that AUB Mediterraneo started on time, fulfilled the wishes of the AUB board, and had crossed many hurdles. “We overcame big challenges. There are many difficulties ahead of us but we achieved the first major milestone and [many things] that we had to do,” he reflects.

Indeed, it is heartening for the future of Lebanese education to speculate that this culture’s love of education is resilient since times of antiquity and at present remains a strong focus of belief in the human potential. As AUB’s Dawy comments, “When we look at Paphos, [contemplating] when and under what conditions did the project start, how fast it was implemented, and how it is growing today, it is a bright example of how institutions can be antifragile in the sense that you do not break under pressure but under pressure you create and reinvent yourself.”

Long list of new challenges to epistemic systems

While all of us beneficiaries of globalization and technique are assumed to love the dream of education as win-win-win ladder of growth and opportunity, we average humans have nonetheless to admit, under universal consideration of what education has achieved for humanity up to the year of 2025, that all schooling from kindergarten to executive MBA courses is also a battleground. Seen through the lens of institutional power, education systems anywhere are constantly at risk of becoming nodes of epistemic injustice in the moment that distorted social contracts, deliberately or intrinsically, are cast under the strategies and tactics of unequal “zero sumness”.

Saying today against the documented background of last year’s increasing belligerence and incidents of violence, not only in the conflicted Middle East region, that education is safe and on a stable path to greater equality and human enlightenment is as smart as pretending that stupidity is not a universal force and that people with PhDs in fields such as computer engineering and material sciences will never allow themselves to be involved in cybercrime or the construction of landmines. 

Economically, against a global background where the World Development Report of 2024 notes a) the total population of the 34 middle-income economies that transitioned to high-income status since 1990 is less than 250 million; b) that prospects of advancement to high income have worsened for middle-income societies during the last decade; and c) that the outlook for advancement of middle-income countries within in one or two generations is “dismal”, egalitarian education remains a perhaps viable but far from certain dream.

Also, in terms of longing for peaceful communities from the smallest town to the community of nations, the world continues to witness how education attainment does not translate organically into non-violence, let alone positive peace. We are forced to acknowledge how being educated contributes to endeavors of engineering new weapons of mass destruction, new tools of oppression and control against the freedom of thought, AI-augmented propaganda of belligerent regimes, etcetera. In worst case scenarios of 21^st century early education, young pupils learn not merely to compete academically and socially in their school environments but have by necessity to be taught how to dive under tables in a school-shooting lockdown situation.