This report marks the second phase of a broad-based research collaboration between the Institute of International Education (IIE) and the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) Human Rights Initiative. The aim is to understand what Syrians have lost, particularly in the fields of higher education and post-graduate training, and to determine how to improve their access to educational opportunities in the front-line states of Syria’s refugee crisis: Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

Oxford University’s Isis Innovation will partner with a group of Omani businessmen to develop a new private, not-for-profit university in Muscat, slated to open in 2016.

News and stories with a focus on the publishing industry, education, and technology from across the Arab world. 

EdX and the Queen Rania Foundation for Education and Development recently announced the creation of the Arabic-language online education portal Edraak. Anant Agarwal, edX’s president, answers a few of Tadween’s questions about the collaboration that will bring MOOCs (massive open online courses) to the Arab world. 

The growing phenomenon of MOOCs (massive open online courses) is no longer contained to the English language. After announcing partnerships that will create MOOCs in Chinese and in French, EdX recently announced that it will be partnering with the Queen Rania Foundation for Education and Development to offer Arabic-language MOOCs.

Edited by Samia Errazzouki and Allison L. McManus 

In the past few decades, both media and academic scholarship have marginalized the Western Saharan conflict, rendering it largely insignificant within regional and global political imaginations.

With a series of articles that range in focus from universities in the Gulf to Hezbollah’s private schooling, the Financial Times released a special report on 20 October 2013 highlighting education in the Arab world. Unfortunately, the Financial Times is under a paywall, where users can only access up to eight articles a month unless they pay a subscription fee. As there are ten articles in the special report, above the restricted limit for free users, Tadween has created a roundup of the articles with links to the original pieces.

By Daria Solovieva

One Friday night in the spring at El Sawy Culturewheel center in the Zamalek neighborhood of Cairo, a small crowd gathered around Amira Hassan El Desoki, jostling for her attention.

The Culturewheel, a former garbage dump turned cultural hub, was holding its first writer’s festival. Some of the featured writers were still teenagers. A crowd of eager young people from across Egypt were waiting for authors like El Desoki to sign their books and speak about their work.