BEIRUT—The education sector in Lebanon has sustained invisible and immeasurable losses during the country’s compounding crises that will be hard to remedy, researchers and professors say.
Adnan El Amine, a senior fellow on education with the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, estimates that the sector’s losses are “big and grave.”
“You need measurement tools to determine the extent of these losses and explore remedies and solutions,” El Amine said in an interview with Al-Fanar Media. “At the moment we cannot tell but I can categorically say that there are serious losses.”
For two years now, Lebanon has been assailed by an unprecedented economic and financial crisis, which was aggravated by Covid-19 lockdowns and the aftermath of the massive explosion at the Port of Beirut on August 4, 2020. (See two related articles, “For Many Universities in Lebanon, Survival May Be at Stake” and “Beirut Blast Cripples an Educational and Cultural Capital.”)
Of the three, the economic crisis has had by far the largest impact on all aspects of people’s lives, especially education. Corruption and political wrangling have cost the local currency more than 90 percent of its value in less than two years, propelling half the population into poverty and locking depositors out of their bank accounts. (See a related article, “Saint-Joseph University Students Lead a Fight Against Corruption in Lebanon.”)