Global University Academy: 16 universities gathering to create training courses for young refugees

"Our project is ambitious, but above all pragmatic: it involves creating training courses for young refugees or displaced persons in camps, by relying on local universities that are at realistic distances so that they can host a certain number of students on a face-to-face basis", Jennifer Heurley, Vice-President of Global Engagement at PSL University (Paris, France), told News Tank on 03/02/2025.

She presents the Global University Academy project, launched in the spring of 2024 by the University of Oslo (Norway) with the UNHCR, which currently brings together 16 partner universities.

There is a lack of post-baccalaureate training programmes for these groups, even though the UNHCR has set a target of increasing the number of those with access to higher education from 7% to 15% by 2030.

"There are programmes for students and researchers in exile and education programmes in refugee camps, but not at university level. So there is a place for this programme, with the ambition of going to scale while taking into account the specificities of each situation", says Jennifer Heurley.

The…