Education in Lebanon: Highly Ranked Worldwide

Lebanon basks with high standard education system backed with high ranked universities allowing its youth to tap into the most advanced specializations and research facilities. However, a great percentage of the Lebanese youth seek to migrate in search of a job, rather then stay in Lebanon. While the lebanese idiosincrasy has been historically permeable to migratory movements, it is noticeable that the an increased number of youth is migrating every year as compared to previous years.

The Problem: Lebanese Youth is Migrating seeking jobs elsewhere.

Lebanon basks with high standard education system backed with high ranked universities allowing its youth to tap into the most advanced specializations and research facilities. However, a great percentage of the Lebanese youth seek to migrate in search of a job, rather then stay in Lebanon. While the lebanese idiosincrasy has been historically permeable to migratory movements, it is noticeable that the an increased number of youth is migrating every year as compared to previous years.

Relying on the data published yearly by the World bank, and on the ranking of the countries in different activities and indicators, it is clear that Lebanon does not have a medium to long term plan for embracing technological nor developmental advances. In fact some alarming issues can be the detected in this front, namely:

• Lebanon lacks advanced technological backbone.It Ranks 122nd in E-government ranking
• It has Limited spending on research and development.
• It Lacks specialization in any sector: Jack of all trades is a jack of none.
• Prestigious education acumen. However fragmented efforts to consolidate
• Absence of support and financial recognition of innovative projects

The details

In fact the spending of Lebanon in research and development (R&D) is very low compared to other countries. While the most advanced countries dedicated up to 4.5% of its GPD to support and finance R&D, Lebanon falls back to rank 104 worldwide, spending a low 0.01% of its GDP in R&D. this holds back the country well entrenched in classical and outdated advancements leaving void the possibility of financing new technological advances.

Another indicator is the HCI or the Human Capital Index, which quantifies the contribution of health and education to the productivity of the country. This indicator is used by the World bank to assess how much income the countries are foregoing because of Human Capital gaps and how much faster they can turn these losses into gains if they act now.
Lebanon ranks as low as 124 in the HCI world ranking, leaving practically the subsidies to higher education in real jeopardy.

Potential solutions

The solutions are spread over short-, medium- and long-term spans. The solutions require direct involvement of the society and the government in steering the country towards radical changes embracing the youth and their aspirations, fostering sustainable knowledge economy and adapting the legislative and fiscal framework to support those initiatives.

Details of Solutions

• Short term action plan: Immediate remedies
  • Internet preferential tariff
  • Fiber optic spread
  • Involve private sector
• Medium to long term actions: Sustainable knowledge and technology economy.
  • foster techno hubs: India
  • Support patenting
  • Revive PPP law
• Legislative and fiscal framework
  • Tax levy for fresh grad employment
  • Technology parks special status
  • industrial parks in Governorate

Recommendations

The recommendations are centered on preserving the human capital in Lebanon by involving all the productive and legislative bodies in the creatingt an adequate environment for the lebanese youth to strive and prosper. The major recommendations are:

Involve private sector in creating and sustaining employment of youth

Encourage youths’ entrepreneurship: Startup hub

Encourage corporations to employ youths via tax levies