The number of initiatives to support refugee students is multiplying rapidly at universities across Europe, but the vast majority of refugees still face insurmountable barriers to higher education. More collaboration and action are now needed, UN and HE leaders urged at the EAIE conference in Liverpool this month.
“Universities have been quite amazing in trying to find ways to reach out and incorporate refugees into their curricula and bring them in,” Melissa Fleming, spokesperson for UNHCR – the UN refugee agency – told delegates at one of two conference plenaries dedicated to addressing issues facing refugees.
“University education for refugees has been neglected, and I don’t think there’s been enough coordination”
However, she said that Europe’s work is far from done. “University education for refugees has been neglected, and I don’t think there’s been enough coordination at all,” she commented, pointing out that just 1% of refugees have access to higher education.
Speaking with The PIE News, Markus Laitinen, newly appointed EAIE president, echoed Fleming’s call for greater coordination. “We’re at a crucial phase right now,” he said. “The initial wave of support that we have received now needs to be converted into action and that needs to take place in several countries and several cities, several universities.
“I think there’s a mental preparedness for it but the mechanisms need to be put in place.”
Fleming said cutting the red tape that is preventing refugees from enrolling in university programmes overseas is paramount.
According to the Pew Research Center, the number of asylum seekers coming to Europe surged to 1.3 million in 2015, up from 65,000 the year before.
Qualifications recognition remains one of the biggest barriers to entry for refugees to higher education, according to Stig Arne Skjerven, director of foreign education at the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education and head of Norwegian ENIC-NARIC.
Europe “more or less failed in the early stages” to respond to the refugee crisis, he said, pointing to a lack of measures to recognise refugees’ education qualifications as a key problem.
Education experts must fight to retain a role in this process, he urged, warning that the job of assessing refugees is “slipping away from the experts” and getting passed onto people like employers.
“To build an inclusive society, it’s important for the refugees to be assessed and be seen by professionals”
“To build an inclusive society, it’s important for the refugees to be assessed and be seen by professionals and get further assistance and advice for the further qualification and integration into our societies,” he said.
“Many of the refugees will go back to their home countries, and it should be possible for them to build up a digital portfolio,” Skjerven told attendees. He pointed to NOKUT’s own qualifications passport, introduced earlier this year, which shows the individual’s educational background, job and language experience for employers, educational institutions and migration authorities.
Abigail Jones, head of the international projects group at qualifications recognition agency UK-NARIC, said many of the programmes set up to help refugees in the UK are undersubscribed, partly because of these entry barriers.
The agency has seen a 70% increase in pageviews on its Syria education profile on its website, indicating a growing interest in understanding the impact of the refugee crisis on Syrian education, she said. However, “when we look at actual student numbers… it is growing in light of the conflict, but at the same time it’s quite low.”
Jones pointed out that in the UK, a University of Bath study identified 25 universities that offered scholarship programmes for refugees – but that most of these were undersubscribed.
“Lots of universities are very active, very keen to support institutions in taking on students, but actually there’s a lot of restrictions in the way, so coming into the UK is quite problematic,” she said.
