[Vision2020] Iraqi Higher Ed in Shambles

[nickgier at adelphia.net]

raq's universities and schools near collapse as teachers and pupils flee

Peter Beaumont in Baghdad
Thursday October 5, 2006
The Guardian

Iraq's school and university system is in danger of collapse in large areas of the country as pupils and teachers take flight in the face of threats of violence.

Professors and parents have told the Guardian they no longer feel safe to attend their educational institutions. In some schools and colleges, up to half the staff have fled abroad, resigned or applied to go on prolonged vacation, and class sizes have also dropped by up to half in the areas that are the worst affected.

Professionals in higher education, particularly those teaching the sciences and in health, have been targeted for assassination. Universities from Basra in the south to Kirkuk and Mosul in the north have been infiltrated by militia organisations, while the same militias from Islamic organisations regularly intimidate female students at the school and university gates for failing to wear the hijab.

Women teachers have been ordered by their ministry to adopt Islamic codes of clothing and behaviour.

"The militias from all sides are in the universities. Classes are not happening because of the chaos, and colleagues are fleeing if they can," said Professor Saad Jawad, a lecturer in political science at Baghdad University.

"The situation is becoming completely unbearable. I decided to stay where many other professors have left. But I think it will reach the point where I will have to decide.

"A large number have simply left the country, while others have applied to go on prolonged sick leave. We are using MA and PhD students to fill in the gaps."

Wadh Nadhmi, who also teaches politics in Baghdad, said: "What has been happening with the murders of professors involved in the sciences is that a lot of those involved in medicine, biology, maths have fled. The people who have got the money are sending their children abroad to study. A lot - my daughter is one of them - are deciding to finish their higher education in Egypt."

It is not only in Baghdad that the universities are beginning to suffer from the security situation. In Mosul, too, professors complain of a system now approaching utter disarray.

Mohammed U, a 60-year-old science professor who asked for his full name not to be disclosed, spoke to the Guardian after returning from the funeral of a colleague, a law professor and head of the law faculty, who died in an explosion.

"Education here is a complete shambles. Professors are leaving, and the situation - the closed roads and bridges - means that both students and teachers find it difficult to get in for classes. In some departments in my institute attendance is down to a third. In others we have instances of no students turning up at all.

"Students are really struggling. To get them through at all, we have had to lower academic levels. We have to go easy on them. The whole system is becoming rapidly degraded."

The situation is reflected in many of Iraq's schools. "Education in my area is collapsing," said a teacher from a high school in Amariya, who quit four months ago. "Children can't get to school because of road blocks. The parents of others have simply withdrawn them from the school because of the fear of kidnapping.

"If children have to travel by car, we are much less likely to see them. When I left, we had 50% attendance. We see parents when they come in to ask for the children to have a 'vacation', and they admit they are too scared to let them come.

"Between September 8 and 28 two members of the staff were murdered. The staff was supposed to be 42. Now there are only 20."

It is hardest of all on young Iraqis, most of whom are desperate for an education. Ala Mohammed, a high school student from Zafaraniya, had hoped to go to university this year. But her college is in Adhamiya, a neighbourhood notorious for violence, so she has been forced to ask for a deferral. "The journey is too long and too unsafe. I don't know whether I will be going to college or stay jailed at home."