Paper presenter: Elizabeth Buckner (PhD student-International/Comparative Education at Stanford University in California), "Syrian youth and their experiences in school, perceptions of higher education and the economic transition"
In 2000, after nearly five decades of state-led development, Syria instituted a number of ambitious economic and educational reforms as part of its transition to a social market economy. Syria’s young people are those most directly affected by these recent employment and educational reforms and therefore, much attention has focused on Syrian youth.
Reforms to higher education were central to Syria’s market reforms. Recent reforms include the establishment of private for-profit universities and new programs such as virtual learning, open learning, and parallel learning (Abdel-Wahid 2009). This has lead to massive expansion in higher education in Syria over the past decade. In 2000, there were four universities in Syria; while all public and free, they enrolled just 12% of 18-23 year olds. Today, there are 19 universities in Syria and approximately 21.7% of the age cohort is enrolled in university (UIS 2009).
By expanding educational opportunities to whole new sectors of the population and decoupling higher education from public sector employment, however, Syria’s recent reforms are altering the nation’s historic system of state-sponsored mobility. More specifically, recent reforms suggest that the role of the state in providing opportunities to its citizens is weakening. Despite our knowledge of the many consequences of higher education expansion generally, little research has tied massification policies at the national level to student perceptions of the university. There is still very little understanding of how recent reforms to expand and privatize higher education are altering young people’s perceptions of their educational and employment opportunities in Syria.
Based on interview research conducted with 25 young Syrian youth aged 18-31 in summer 2009, this paper will examine how the massification of higher education in Syria is altering young people’s experiences of higher education and their perceptions of the opportunity structure.
My paper will also discuss some of the difficulties investigating such a nuanced and potentially controversial topic in Syria. While interviews provide direct contact and in-depth perspective on young people’s lives, foreign researchers must overcome hurdles such as: lack of trust, language barriers, limited access, non-representative samples, and willingness to talk openly. While these barriers are real, I will argue that they should not prevent researchers from attempting to understand young people’s experiences of the economic transition and their perceptions of opportunity in Syria, as this is a much needed area of research.
Based on interview findings, I argue that while objective opportunities for both education and private sector employment may be expanding in Syria, youths’ subjective perceptions of educational and employment opportunities are not as optimistic, for a number of reasons.

First, while today’s youth are extremely ambitious, access to higher education no longer promises the secure position in the state sector that it once did.

Second, while the recent reforms have been successful at introducing diverse new tertiary education providers and decreasing the rigidity of student sorting, it is perhaps only those with the means to pay who can benefit.

Lastly, institutional, family, and cultural pressures still limit young people’s educational and employment options, frequently directing them into majors and careers for which they have little interest.