Addendum

This is an Arabic article I found today on Champress about universities and education in Syria. I thought it was interesting to see this a day after I wrote about research and private education. This article anyway is more systematic and extensive and worth reading. It is available on this link:
نحو جامعة متقدمة وديمقراطية
To support the story about the professors from Eastern European countries (previously communists) I will tell this story. It was told to me by one of my friends dad.
Briefly, a Romanian group was visiting the institution were this father worked. The language was a definite barrier but to his content there was a lawyer, who got a Masters in international laws from Romania, available. They asked him to help in communication with the group but he apologized for not knowing Romanian.
When asked about his Master (or PhD, I am not sure) he simply said I was taking threads, gold, and socks (or whatever) and used to sell them there, then he would come back to Syria and sell something else. By doing that he paid for his trips, expenses...... and his certificate.
So this is the type of people educating our growing young generation, how is this generation going to be different??
I am not sure whether I wrote this story before, but to add to it, it seems that we have NOW realized the amount of fraud professors and doctors (yes, medical doctors) here, and thankfully some licenses are being disqualified (I hope so) and stricter criteria are applied to those coming from places were, as the linked article says, "their education system was failing".
This is the saddest thing one can hear about. But is there a way to fix it?