Despite such success stories, current US refugee policy may prevent the future Penziases of the world from attending US universities.

Today the world is facing the largest migrant crisis in human history: More than 65 million people—nearly one percent of the world’s population—are displaced as a result of conflict. While the demands of survival have taken priority, the large and unaddressed educational needs of this population are astounding: The United Nations estimates that there are at least 200,000 Syrians who have had their post-secondary education interrupted as a result of the conflict.

The one clear message from all our meetings was that everyone in the region was desperate for help from US universities, with their extraordinary educational resources, to do something to curtail the tremendous loss of human and economic potential from the Syrian crisis.

We now know that there exists a highly qualified population of refugees who would do well at many other US universities. Yet today, we are aware of only two similar programs at much smaller universities, Illinois Institute of Technology and Monmouth College, both of which have placed refugee graduates in jobs at big-name firms such as Goldman Sachs and Google. Although we are not experts on the refugee crisis, we are confident that what we have done can and hopefully will be replicated at America’s other 4,700 colleges.

Higher education of displaced students, not just from Syria but from many other nations, makes econonomic sense for those individuals with the academic potential to study at leading US universities. Furthermore, many of these individuals have the critical skills needed to lead peaceful rebuilding efforts of their nations once conflict ends.

Given the course of the current US political climate, it has struck us how much more important it is that universities—whose stated mission is the advancement of knowledge—work to ensure that refugee students who have the potential to become great contributors to society, if not future Nobel laureates, have access to their vast resources.

Read the full article about education for refugees by Kim Gittleson & Bruce Usher at Stanford Social Innovation Review.