University sector faces serious losses, experts say

Al-Fanar Media 13 November 2021

Researchers and professors say the education sector in Lebanon has sustained invisible and immeasurable losses during the country’s compounding crises that will be hard to remedy, writes Samar Kadi for Al-Fanar Media.

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 4 August 2020. Teachers and the administrative staff at the Lebanese University, the country’s sole public university, have gone on an open-ended strike since October after their salaries in Lebanese pounds lost more than nine times their value. Their move is threatening to scrap the current academic year.

“We are in a deep crisis,” said Ziad Abou Alwan, a professor of architecture at the university’s faculty of fine arts and architecture. “Teachers’ salaries can hardly cover the cost of transportation to campus. I fear the whole academic year will be lost and the students will be paying the price.”
Full report on the Al-Fanar Media site

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