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Missions Impossible
Higher Education and Policymaking in the Arab World
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It is also the case that the structural adjustment crises at the close of the twentieth century had far-reaching international ramifications, involving foreign creditors and trade partners. To do nothing was not an option. By contrast, crises in higher education are largely contained within the countries that gave rise to them in the first place. One might plausibly argue that there is spillover, in that poor-quality higher education feeds educated youth unemployment, which in turn fosters high out-migration and perhaps Islamist radicalism. It is plausible but a stretch. I have not heard any country threatened by radical Islamists demanding reform of higher education as a result.
A second driver of policy change is the leverage exerted by the donor and nongovernmental organization (NGO) community. The economic crises increased that leverage. Multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, the IMF, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) and bilateral agencies like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) all weighed in on the reform agenda and stimulated some action. As important, these agencies acted as conduits to the formation of ‘communities of practice’ (Haas 1992), whereby somewhat isolated and numerically small expert groups in countries undergoing reform were brought together with international expert groups that fully understood and understand best practice. Communities of practice provide validation for national pockets of expertise that often operate in a politically hostile environment. The combination of multilateral or bilateral funding and communities of practice can exert considerable pressure for reform.
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