After the end of the so-called “civil” war, which lasted 15 years, and the beginning of the era of militia rule and its drive to legitimize chaos, then Minister of Culture Ghassan Salameh coined the term “boutique universities” to describe the newly established universities that began granting doctoral degrees as soon as they opened, even before obtaining licenses to issue postgraduate degrees.

Today, with growing complaints about the excessive proliferation of doctoral degrees, which is lowering their academic standard and value, this raises questions about the usefulness of maintaining the intermediate education certificate known as the “Brevet.”

In the past, the primary school certificate, the “Certificat,” was required to obtain employment, while the Brevet was considered the highest-level qualification. But the Certificat disappeared and no longer holds any educational or employment value, meaning the reasons for its existence vanished, especially since the secondary school certificate itself now carries little practical value.

Advancing from one educational stage to another is no longer considered a measure of success. In countries around the world, promotion has become automatic, extending even to modern university education systems.

However, this is not a call to push educational standards toward further decline. Rather, it is a call for serious reflection on the value of this certificate after it has become similar to what the Certificat once was. If it is merely an exercise in preparing students for official exams, then it would be more appropriate to reintroduce the Certificat in a more modern form.

It is a call to break out of the cycle that repeats every year by officially and permanently abolishing the Brevet while preserving the higher-level certificates, which have also begun losing their credibility, especially with the existence of ways to bypass the Lebanese Baccalaureate through equivalent certificates from different nationalities.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Annahar