‘Long-term commitment’ needed for refugee university initiative

In 2019, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) established a goal: 15 per cent of young refugees should be enrolled in higher education by 2030. When this “15by30” target was announced, only 1 per cent of refugees had access to higher education; in 2023, that figure had risen to 7 per cent. The global average, meanwhile, is 42 per cent.

Last year, 16 universities from Africa, Europe and North America launched an initiative with the 15 per cent target in mind: the Global University Academy (GUA). In December, GUA will present its first “global education model” at the UNHCR’s Global Refugee Forum Progress Review in Geneva.

“We hope to make scalable programmes that can really make a difference for many,” said Svein Stølen, the former rector of the University of Oslo, which is coordinating the initiative with the University of Geneva.

“Currently there are a lot of very good programmes that are on offer, but they’re small and they don’t necessarily talk well with each other, so it’s very fragmented,” explained project leader Marianne Knarud. “Almost all of those offers rely on scholarship schemes, so you have to pick and choose a few students who you move from where they live to the city or to another country, and then they get an opportunity to attend university.”

Instead, Knarud said, “we need to come together as a global community to collaborate with universities [in countries with large refugee populations] to provide offers that are closer to where the refugees are”. Digital-only programmes are insufficient, she added: “The dropout rate is extremely high when the offer is 100 per cent online.”

The GUA plan, Stølen explained, is for the network of universities to create “stackable” short courses grounded in employability. For students, flexibility will be key: “Most are not in conditions where they can study for two years, so we’ll start with shorter courses – it might be two to three months, or half a year – but [the courses will] build on each other, so that you can stack them together.”

Some GUA students “will maybe just need a couple of courses to refresh, because they already have some higher education, or maybe they need to reskill”, said Knarud. Credit-bearing courses, however, “can be put together with other components, and that could eventually build up to a degree”.

“We’re asking the universities to think about what it would take to collaborate and to recognise courses from other institutions, so we don’t rely on one university to provide the whole thing. One university could do a module or two, then another university could do a couple,” Knarud said.

“I think what we’ve seen is that we have to cluster universities who can do that, so you don’t have to ask the universities to say that they will just accept all courses given by 100 universities.”

Even a smaller cluster of institutions will likely span multiple countries, if not continents: current participants include Makerere University in Uganda, the University of Cape Town in South Africa, PSL in France, the University of Oxford in the UK, Al Hussain Technical University in Jordan and Arizona State University in the US.

Differing national regulations and conventions pose a significant obstacle to mutually recognised, international programmes, as observers of the winding road towards a potential European degree, for example, will be aware.

“We’ve learned a lot from the universities that have gone through the European Universities Initiative,” said Knarud. “We’re trying to work with governments and intergovernmental organisations to see what is possible within the frameworks that already exist and what is possible to change.”

GUA partner Unesco is “working a lot on the recognition part, thinking about how to establish regional and global conventions to ease those difficult equation issues”, she said. Recognition will also be key “for learners who have started their academic journey in one country and then had to flee, to ensure the credits that they’ve already taken are accepted”.

Funding is another issue. Ideally, GUA will “find a way to have the different parts of the puzzle financed different ways”, Stølen said. Participating universities will obtain some external funding, he anticipates: “There are local agencies that could possibly contribute, like the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, which we hope can support some of the needs we have on the ground, in the camps.”

The initiative will need some central funding “so we are not dependent on all universities funding their money separately, so we are working on that as well”, he said, adding that private companies may also participate in the future.

The aim, however, is for individual universities to take “ownership” of their role in GUA, “so that the universities see it as part of their mission”, Stølen said. “What you see today is that [similar initiatives] are done by single professors that have a strong will. They have finances for three years, and then the professor finds something else they want to do or the money disappears. So we need sustainable, long-term commitment from universities.”

“We want universities to come in and do what they’re good at: developing courses, doing the teaching, doing the evaluation, offering academic support,” said Knarud. GUA will provide the “connection box”, she explained, linking universities with local refugee communities and governments as well as partners like UNHCR, Unesco, Save the Children and the Norwegian Refugee Council.

Pilot projects are already under way in Uganda and Jordan, with courses available in IT and community health. “In 2026, we’re going to have new offers in Jordan, and then we’re thinking 2027 to expand both pilot projects and scope,” Stølen said. “The aim is to make something sustainable.”