Increased Competition and Income Diversification at Beirut Arab University
Abstract
The Lebanese market of tertiary education has noticeably expanded over the last decade. On the supply side, the number of functioning universities, branches, and study centers reached 79 in 2011-2012. On the demand side, the number of students in tertiary education has significantly increased to reach 192,522 in 2011-2012. This paper sheds the light on the increasing competition in the private tertiary education market in Lebanon, mainly in those areas where “new” universities have mostly entered such as business administration, arts, and sciences. These market changes are illustrated by the shrinking market share of the “traditional” universities in the above fields compared to the market share growth of some “new” universities. In the advent of the financial strains resulting from the above changes, Beirut Arab University (BAU), a well-established university in Lebanon, has taken additional steps to adjust its traditional funding model that relies almost only on students’ contributions. BAU has made substantial progress in designing a modern funding model inspired from the ongoing European reforms and other models, where revenue streams are more diversified. These steps have started to pay off. Despite increased competition in the last few years, BAU’s total revenues maintained an upward trend. BAU’s Income diversification is expected to widen further in the future due to the potential forthcoming revenues from commercial operations and research-based partnerships with the business sector.
Author(s)
Dr. Abdallah Nassereddine
Coauthor(s)
Dr. Abdallah Nassereddine
Journal/Conference Information
Good Practices in Higher Education Financial Management European Commission UNAM Tempus Framework (Tempus Project Booklet),25 - 45, 2013