YASMIN WAS AT HOME AFTER A DAY AT work at Al-Baath University in Homs, Syria, when she heard that one of her students had been shot and killed. Yasmin’s life had been dominated by Syria’s civil war since unrest began in 2011. Syria’s higher education system is in meltdown. Students and academics have fled the country in droves, and higher education institutions are being targeted by both sides in a civil war that has claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people to date.

Some, like Yasmin, have gone to work and study in the UK with the support of organisations such as the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (Cara). According to Anne Lonsdale, chair of the charity, a number of the country’s universities have been forced to close, while those that remain are barely functioning.

Syrian-born astrophysicist Rim Turkmani, Dorothy Hodgkin Royal Society research fellow at Imperial College London, says that academics have become targets for militants from both sides because of their influence and relatively high salaries. “They are important people. They can mobilise their students either way. So unfortunately, they are seen as a threat,” she explains. “Anyone who is interested in taking over an area will usually assassinate the intellectuals and academics. We saw it in Iraq, and now we’re seeing it again.”

Although life inside Syria’s universities is becoming impossible, many of those who have left the country are faring no better. Syrians studying at universities abroad have struggled to pay their fees because the war and international sanctions have made it difficult to access Syrian accounts from abroad. Other Syrians at foreign universities have left education altogether.
Turkmani recently visited academic refugees living near Syria’s border with Jordan. There she found a university professor sharing a tiny house with 25 other people, unable to feed their families. Turkmani is now attempting to build support for academics in her home country. She is currently working in partnership with other academics and private companies to fund research by Syrian academics in an attempt to start the renewal of the country’s research system. She has also established a trust to support those scholars caught up in the crisis.

With so many students leaving the country, Turkmani is also seeking to establish an Open University-style institution for exiled and refugee Syrians. “Many are stranded on the borders, and there isn’t a particular body or organisation that is reaching out to them,” says Turkmani. “No one is looking to hear their views. They’ve been ignored and marginalised.”

Before the war, Syrian universities were in poor health. In an academy compromised by a lack of investment and endemic corruption, only 1 percent of the country’s academics published research papers, according to Turkmani. The war has turned a system that was in disarray into one that is in ruins.

Mohamad Husam Helmi, a doctoral candidate in economics and finance at Brunel University whose ambition before the war was to return to Syria once he acquired his Ph D, says he is deeply distressed by the situation. “It is not only universities that are being destroyed, but a whole generation. Young people have been out of education for two years since the war started. This is going to create huge problems in the future,” he laments.

(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)