Uncounted and Unacknowledged: Syria’s Refugee University Students and Academics in Jordan (2013)

The crisis in Syria continues to have a devastating impact on professors, university students, and the education sector, not only in Syria but also in the neighboring countries that are hosting so many displaced Syrians. In this report, the University of California, Davis and the Institute of International Education (IIE) look at the conditions and educational needs of Syrian university students and scholars in Jordan. “Uncounted and Unacknowledged: Syria’s Refugee University Students and Academics in Jordan” is based on first-hand research and interviews conducted in Jordan in April 2013 through a research collaboration between IIE’s Scholar Rescue Fund and the University of California, Davis.

The dual impact of institutional collapse and worsening security means that Syria faces the loss of a generation of university graduates. These constitute a special group within the conflict’s victims because they include Syria’s brightest and most ambitious young people. They are the human capital that will be critical to the rebuilding of Syrian society after the conflict has ended, and they will have an even more crucial role to play as a modern and moderating force in confronting the religious intolerance and ethnic hatred that increasingly defines the war in their homeland.

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IIE / UC Davis Study on the Syrian Conflict, Refugee Crisis, and Higher Education

With support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, IIE and the University of California, Davis are teaming up to produce the first-ever study on the conditions and educational needs of Syrian university students and academics in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. The project brings together field-based research in these countries to look at the impact of the refugee crisis on higher education and to explore possible solutions for both Syrians and their host communities.

IIE has also produced reports on the situations in Lebanon, “The War Follows Them: Syrian University Students & Scholars in Lebanon,” and Turkey, “We Will Stop Here and Go No Further: Syrian University Students & Scholars in Turkey.” The project aims to provide policy and programmatic recommendations that donors, governments, international NGOs, and universities will use to increase Syrian refugees’ access to higher education.