Rima Muhammed, Baladi News
Over the past five years, the education sector in Syria has witnessed a significant deterioration due to the war waged by the Syrian regime against its people. The educational process now is almost like what it used to be in the 80s of the last century according to a UNICEF study.
Many international universities have canceled recognition of the degrees rewarded by any Syrian university after the latter have lost the International standards for measurement and evaluation following the sudden rise of a number of students enrolled at medicine and engineering faculties.
“Many international institutions specialized in international recognition of university degrees are waiting for the ministry to provide them with the procedures taken by it in order to save the Syrian university degree”, according to regime's Minister of High Education.
The situation in the exam centers in Latakia city is almost chaotic; cheating and favoritism are ruling the final exams of high school diploma. Sons of officers, thugs and soldiers are even getting the questions along with the answers before taking the exam.
A teacher named “Om Bashar” posted on Facebook: “I’m an invigilator, but I had to leave because it was a real shame, some teachers were shamefully beaten because of their integrity”.
Jafaar al-Sadik and Salih Mahmood girl schools in Jableh city along with Ala’a Salman in Latakia city were the most famous for the leaked questions and overt cheating because many officials’ relatives are there.
A Facebook page called “Sha’ab Mfarfesh” which means “cheerful people” is posting the exam questions just hours prior to their time. The page also warns of “counterfeit copies” that some “traders” are trying to promote and sell. On the other hand, the ministry of high education declared that they are pleased with the exam process and that they are working on more “improvements”.
The minister of high education also said on the sidelines of opening (role of Measurement and Evaluation in Higher Education Quality conference) held at al-Qalamoun private university, which is owned by one of the regime renowned businessmen: “Some Syrian experts assisted us to define some procedures in order to control the quality of the Syrian university degree which is internationally recognized”.
We cannot determine exactly what the minister means and we cannot tell whether these procedures are going to be enforced on the regime officers and thugs along with their families.
It seems that the regime is paying for its old way of neglecting education and banning university improvement; getting into university became the dream of the Syrian students.
The governmental universities were few compared to the Syrian population; Syrians have lived for decades with only four universities. However, the regime started to make new universities, but only because they were a new financial source and not for the good of students and citizens.
The regime's war against the Syrian people resulted in killing and displacing a lot of Syrian minds which was accompanied lately with favoritism and questions' leaking. As a matter of fact, it is something that used to happen secretly, but now it's happening very boldly, which seems to be an attempt by the regime to win the hearts of his supporters by allowing them to gain all opportunities of state employments and do exactly the opposite to his opponents i.e. depriving them of education and employment.