Rural Youth and Higher Education: Implications on Livelihoods and Civic Engagement

Abstract

While there is extensive literature discussing the impact of higher education on youth livelihoods highlighting the return to education, very few studies examine the sophisticated interlinkages between higher education and youth’s livelihoods and civic engagement from the students’ perspective. This study tries to analyze the impact of higher education on rural community development in two rural areas in Lebanon (Ras El Matn and Roueiset El Ballout) through conducting semi structured interviews and surveys with enrolled and graduated youth.

The results indicate that higher education is contributing to rural youth’s lives in a different way compared to other youth. It was clear that although higher education didn’t necessarily secure them a job or induce an increase in their income, it has equipped them with communication skills and contributed to a new type of civic and political engagement as they have broken out of their narrow networks to wider type of engagement with bigger social networks. Moreover, the involvement of the political parties in rural youth’s higher education was documented in several instances, especially through providing them with partial scholarships at some private universities. However, what was also noted was how youth’s enrolment in higher education made them more aware and critical regarding their inherited political affiliation. These findings suggest that despite all the challenges rural youth face nowadays and their plans to leave the country, their involvement in higher education has an impact on rural community development. On one hand, youth are willing to make use of the technical and soft skills they acquired at university in their civic engagement and giving back to the community. On the other hand, they are complementing their university degrees with practical experience with an aim to secure employment and thereby improve their livelihoods.