Economic forces behind everything: Middle East edition

What has made the situation especially volatile is that, during the past thirty years, many Arab countries have greatly expanded their higher-education systems. In Egypt, about a quarter of students now attend college of some sort, and there are few suitable jobs for them when they graduate. Unlike in the United States and other Western countries, the unemployment rate increases with the level of educational attainment. “Joblessness among Egyptian college graduates is almost ten times that of people with primary education,” Marcus Noland, deputy director of the Washington-based Institute for International Economics, and Howard Park, an economist at Wharton, have pointed out. “It is no surprise that the leaders of the current unrest are univesity graduates.”

That’s from John Cassidy’s excellent article looking at the way Islam has — or perhaps has not — held back economic development in the Middle East.