AU - Waterbury, John AB - Because reform of higher education is inherently politically dangerous, with ramifications reaching well beyond the educational sphere itself, we must ask how policy reform might come about. This contribution argues that change is occurring because it is largely crisis-driven. The best-known instances of painful reforms in the Arab world came in response to the structural economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s. Leaders at that time, and today, were willing to implement reforms that shattered social contracts because the alternative—business as usual—appeared to be even worse. The impetus for educational reform is derived from the on-going economic crises. In particular reforms will try to respond to the dangerously high levels of unemployment, above all youth unemployment, that characterize the Arab world. The inability of Arab youth to find suitable employment is the result of an educational system characterized by outmoded pedagogy, insufficient public funding, and inappropriate training for the twenty-first century work place. It is argued here that leaders in the Arab world realize, above all after the uprisings of 2011, that this situation can be regime-threatening. I explore the reform challenges under the following rubrics: 1) governance and finance; 2) education for the job market; 3) quality assurance; 4) incompletion rates; 5) research/R&D; regional cooperation; 6) information technology (IT). (Author’s abstract) http://search.shamaa.org/abstract_en.gif OP - pp. 133-166 T1 - Reform of higher education in the Arab world [Chapter]