Chapter 8: Bringing Higher Education to Displaced Ethnic Minorities on the Thai-Burma Border: Three Academic Models for Overcoming International, Ethnic, and Technological Barriers

In 2000, a small group of professionals, known as the Refugee Tertiary Education Committee (RTEC), began meeting in Melbourne, Australia, to investigate the possibility of bringing higher education to camp-based refugees on the Thai-Burma border. This chapter presents their experiences of encouraging universities to provide academic courses to Burmese refugees on the border through a mixture of online and distance education. It also includes the perspectives of two program coordinators on the ground. This work is the beginning of a new movement in developing transformative relationships between those with educational resources and refugees, displaced populations, and other disenfranchised groups in need of advanced education.