@Marguer_dMarguerite Dehler
With the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the higher education sector in Libya can look forward to a freer future, where universities have more control over their curricula and hopefully better funding. It would be a fitting result to the armed rebellion, which was widely supported by academics and students, some of whom picked up a gun to fight.The Transitional National Council (TNC) that is now responsible for running Libya has promised to not only re-open universities and colleges promptly this autumn, but also to make sweeping improvements to the education system as a whole. It remains to be seen over the coming months whether the new governing council can fulfill these promises.
But Tasnim Wafa, 19, an electrical engineering student at Tripoli's Nasser University, a branch of the capital's Al Fatah University, toldUniversity World News that he was hopeful.
Wafa claimed there had long been shortages of teaching materials, books and equipment at his college and that academics were of a poor standard. He hoped that under a new government, standards would improve.
"We need new, clean buildings, libraries, well-trained teachers and a new strong curriculum," he said, claiming that former studies were so weak that foreign universities considered two years of study at Nasser as being worth one year for qualification purposes.
The TNC has promised to reopen his university by the end of September, he said, adding: "We trust the TNC."
He said he would change courses and enter law school: "It's my passion. In Gaddafi's regime, there wasn't a law, it was only his Green Book [the colonel's manual of leftist government principles, which academics had to teach to students]. So if I went to law school before, I was going to study only Gaddafi crap, you see? But now, we have a constitution. After everything settles down, everything will change."
He told University World News that he and many other students had conducted passive resistance by not showing up to lectures, despite being instructed to by the regime.
"This last semester I didn't go to school [university]...Gaddafi wanted us to show up and act like nothing was going on. On their media they were saying 'If you don't come, you'll fail', and stuff like that. But I refused. Most of us didn't show up. And to tell you the truth, our education sucks, so there was no point in going. But now it will all change for the better."
He said he had helped produce an underground magazine containing news about the rebellion, which was distributed by hand in the streets of Tripoli. Two of his cousins participated in protests and were arrested - they have since been released, unharmed.
Many students and academics took an active part in a rebellion that was marked by its reliance on amateur revolutionaries from across society, and some took great risks.
One was Sari Elalem, 21, an English student at Benghazi's Garyounis University. While he stayed at home during the first two weeks of the rebellion, he later fought with the rebels, his best friend dying at his side.
He recalled: "At first, we weren't fully grasping what was going on, there was a lot of fighting, killing and fear, the internet stopped and the phones stopped. The first two days we stayed in the neighbourhood and we didn't do much, we watched the news all the time."
However, after the fall of the garrison in Benghazi in February, a key early event in the success of the rebellion, Elalem celebrated in the streets with other city residents and then volunteered to fight, being trained at a rebel base in Benghazi, working with his best friend Isa Gziri, also 21.
Constant requests to be sent to the frontlines were refused and the pair quit the official rebel force in July, and travelled incognito to the western city of Zintan, where they volunteered with the Aljawarih battalion, which welcomed them, armed them, and sent them to the then besieged city of Misrata.
But eight days later, tragedy struck: "While chasing some Gaddafi mercenaries a mortar shell fell near [Gziri], hitting him with shrapnel in the back of his head and the chest. I wanted to keep fighting, but he told me before that if something happened to him I had to take him back to be buried in Benghazi," Elalem explained.
"I got us a place on one of the ships leaving to Benghazi and I took him there, to (as he told me) be seen one last time by his mother. It's hard to lose a loved one in war, but I can't be sad for Isa, because he's a martyr, and Inshallah he's in heaven now."
Many other students did however continue their studies in the liberated zones.
Elshaab Wafa, 23, a female medical student from Benghazi's Al-Arab Medical University, was undertaking an internship in Benghazi's Al-Jamahiriya Maternity Hospital, when the rebellion broke out.
Because some doctors abandoned their posts, she was assigned work in the intensive care unit, and stayed beyond her allotted internship to maintain services. She also undertook additional hours and worked to cover staff shortages in different units at the hospital.
She said fourth-year students were called back to complete their examinations after the rebellion succeeded in Benghazi. "But then the university was shut down, except for charity work and some students stayed in the university to keep it safe from robbery, except for that there wasn't much trouble."
Generally, though, medical studies continued to be organised in TNC-controlled Benghazi, and she was rotated into a surgical unit and then a paediatric unit, as planned earlier, while the rebellion continued.
This kind of partial operation was common in the liberated eastern half of the country during the six months' long rebellion.
One such university was at Omar Al-Mukhtar University, based in the eastern Libya city of Al-Bayda, which received money from the TNC and guidance from the provisional education ministry headed by Suliman el-Sahli.
Speaking to University World News in Derna, eastern Libya, Mohamed El-Falah Abdelrazeg, an architecture lecturer, said that after the rebellion staff and students had protected the university. They ensured that there were no attacks on its buildings after the Gaddafi regime was kicked out of the region in February.
Although a full education programme was not maintained, there were activities at the university such as art exhibitions, meetings of student organisations, political awareness campaigns, the organisation of aid for victims of the struggle and some seminars staged by the law faculty and others on civil societies, constitutions and elections.
Abdelrazeg said the institution was now doing very well. "There were no attacks on the university, plus both the students and the staff are still coming to the campus regularly. And even during the confusion of the beginning of the revolution some students and members of the faculty took it upon themselves to protect the university."
He said university officials were now working on management and financial issues to develop a plan to resume full operations after the installation of a new government. The plan is to reopen fully by the end of September, possibly in October.
He said university managers had been working with TNC since February, liaising via a crisis management committee. Thus far the council had only released general plans for education in the post-Gaddafi era, he said, with faculty members being responsible for detailed course development.
Abdelrazeg himself has been serving on the university's finance and field-work committees, helping to coordinate the preparation of courses and respond to the demands of working during an armed rebellion. "We do this for Allah and our country," he said.
With the old regime now having fallen, the state of the higher education system in the parts of the country that had until recently been under its control is now becoming more clear.
Wafa's Nasser University was the subject of claims by the regime that it had been targeted by NATO bombs in June. Photographs and videos from Libyan state and some unofficial western video bloggers showed classrooms and offices with windows and doors blasted apart by explosions.
Cracks were seen in the walls of some rooms while books and papers were strewn in disarray. In one lecture hall, broken ceiling tiles covered the floor, breaking the desks on which they fell.
The regime used the story as a propaganda tool, with reports showing images of bodies in hospital beds and reporters claiming students and staff were killed. NATO's website makes no direct remark on this incident, but it has stated that no such casualties were suffered. It did not reply to queries on the issue from University World News.
Generally, the Gaddafi regime claimed NATO bombing and the rebel insurgency it protected had seriously disrupted higher education services. For instance, the former Libyan education chief briefed the International Committee of the Red Cross that the NATO bombardment had disrupted education in many regions, particularly in the east (the heartland of the rebellion).
Dr Abdelkebir Fakhiri claimed extensive bomb damage at some campuses, causing psychological problems for students during examinations, while many lecturers and students could not reach their universities because of fuel shortages caused by NATO's blockade of Gaddafi government-controlled areas.
Meanwhile, Libyan students studying abroad saw their government funding dry up as the rebellion continued, with problems getting particularly serious from May, as reported in University World News. It is anticipated that funding will start to flow again.
Overseas Libyan students do not appear to be upset with the rebellion, however. With the rebels' victory close at hand, Libyan students have been reported tearing down symbols of the Gaddafi regime at Libyan embassies and consulates around the world, including those located in Sarajevo, Bosnia; Manila, Philippines; and Pretoria, South Africa.
They were met with little resistance, since diplomats themselves have been defecting to pledge allegiance to the rebellion.
