黑料不打烊

For young refugees and displaced learners, higher education can be a path out of crisis and into a future where they can study, work, lead and thrive. It is a powerful path towards independence and rebuilding – not just for individuals but for entire communities.

The Global University Academy (GUA) was created in response to this challenge. Rather than adding a new standalone programme, GUA brings together universities, humanitarian organisations, UN agencies, governments and local partners to test a different proposition: that universities can act collectively to expand access to quality accredited higher education for refugees where they live, at a scale and cost that makes a meaningful contribution to global targets such as .

Refugees who complete higher education earn higher wages and actively contribute to rebuilding their communities. According to , investing in tertiary education has some of the highest returns of any level of education, especially in low-income settings. It strengthens civic engagement, social cohesion and community leadership, key ingredients for peace and stability. Still, across the world, access to higher education remains one of the most persistent and overlooked gaps in responses to forced displacement.

‘Across the world, access to higher education remains one of the most persistent and overlooked gaps in responses to forced displacement.’

While more than 120 million people are currently displaced, globally have access to higher education. In low- and middle-income countries, which host the highest numbers of refugees, enrolment rates are even lower. This is not because of a lack of motivation or ability. Talent is universally distributed, but sadly opportunities are not.

Displaced learners face overlapping financial, legal and structural barriers that severely limit access to higher education. Refugee women and learners with disabilities face additional layers of exclusion.

At the heart of GUA lies a shift in perspective. Instead of the traditional scholarship model, GUA brings the university to the learner. This means designing hybrid and blended learning models that combine online academic provision from accredited universities with local connected learning hubs, peer support, mentoring and relevant wraparound services. on education in emergencies shows that for learners facing displacement-related barriers. Onsite, community-embedded support is essential if learning is to be relevant, inclusive and sustainable.

Over the past year, GUA partners developed a shared and grounded in three core assumptions. First, reaching significantly more displaced learners requires new pedagogical models. Second, models designed for scale must make better use of existing academic resources. And third, sustainability depends on partnerships and shared responsibility, rather than placing the burden on host-country universities or humanitarian actors alone.

‘Sustainability depends on partnerships and shared responsibility, rather than placing the burden on host-country universities or humanitarian actors alone.’

GUA is not a degree-awarding institution but a coordinating framework. Academic credits and qualifications are issued by accredited partner universities, with designated ‘vessel’ institutions taking responsibility for admissions, quality assurance and credentialing when programmes draw on contributions from multiple partners. Courses are organised into thematic, modular portfolios allowing learners to progress through stackable pathways that can function as standalone credentials or build towards larger qualifications over time. This approach is deliberately flexible, recognising that learners’ trajectories are often nonlinear in contexts of displacement.

Consultations with refugee learners and local actors in different contexts have informed pilot design in Jordan, Uganda and Bangladesh, each of which will test the model under different policy, infrastructural and humanitarian conditions. The aim is to generate evidence about what works, for whom and under what conditions, and then expand what works. In this sense, GUA should be understood as a learning initiative as much as a delivery mechanism.

For the higher education research and practice community, GUA raises important questions. What responsibilities do universities have in responding to global displacement, beyond individual scholarship schemes? How can academic quality and accreditation be preserved while embracing flexibility and modularity? And how can collective action help to overcome the limitations of fragmented, institution by institution approaches?

As displacement becomes increasingly protracted in many countries and new crises emerge, these questions will not go away. GUA offers a collaborative attempt to answer them, grounded in the belief that higher education can and must be part of more equitable and sustainable responses to displacement.

The arguments in this blog post are grounded in the Global University Academy background papers, and , drawing on established literature on refugee higher education, education in emergencies and blended learning.