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South China Morning Post
Thursday, January
13, 2000
BURMA
Efforts to
revive education 'feeble'
WILLIAM BARNES in Bangkok The reopening of Burma's big universities appears unlikely to do more than
partially resolve the dire education vacuum, informed observers said yesterday.
Thirty core universities were shut in late 1996 after a round of student protests rattled a military regime that has kept open defiance in check for at least 10 years. Rather than risk simply opening even the original bruised colleges, the regime is creating "sanitised" campuses offering degrees stripped of any subjects that might touch on politics or current affairs. Such moves betrayed a carelessness that promised, at best, a feeble education and, at worst, sham degrees, one foreign expert said. Critics of the regime have consistently claimed that the ruling generals place an unusually low priority on education. Most universities have been open for less than three years since nation-wide protests erupted in 1988 - prompting expressions of alarm from even relatively friendly countries like Japan. Yet military and medical colleges did not close and post-graduate study appears to have been carried on in most institutes. A few classes, especially voluntary evening classes, appear to have been held in all colleges. The Government has also offered distance learning courses and - in 1998 - quickie degrees after a week or so of cramming. The partial return of students to the Rangoon Technology University - a traditional hotbed of student activism - appears likely to be the pattern for the rest of the country. Classes for third- and fourth-year students in "safe" subjects like engineering restarted a fortnight ago, but at a new campus about 30 minutes drive from the capital. Students have been made to sign papers promising not to engage in any political activity and warned sharply that any political demonstrations will see the college doors slammed shut again. The Government has said that first- and second-year students will be permitted to return in May. New college-age students are being forced to attend two-year engineering diploma courses, perhaps to weed out troublemakers, at Government Technical Colleges before going on to other institutions. |