The scars from the years that Aung Thein Lwin spent in Burmese jails are indelible. His teeth are bright white because they are false. His real ones, he says, were knocked out during numerous beatings in prison.
In 1988, when he was in high school, Mr. Aung Thein Lwin participated in antigovernment student protests that broke out on college campuses across Myanmar, then known as Burma. The response from the government was brutal. Thousands of students were killed, while others, like him, were thrown in prison. Since then, he has spent a total of 20 years incarcerated. He was released last year, after the new civilian government announced that it would begin freeing political prisoners.
“Because of the military dictatorship, so many people are uneducated here,” Mr. Aung Thein Lwin says. Myanmar’s military leaders “wanted to control people’s minds, because if people had knowledge, then they would want to change the country.”
The 43-year-old taxi driver is a potent symbol of the devastation that Myanmar’s junta has wrought on the country—and its education system, including its 163 colleges and universities.
But now, as the country takes cautious steps toward becoming a more open society, Burmese scholars and politicians, including the pro-democracy activist Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, hope to rebuild the system, which was once one of the best in Asia. And American universities want to help.
Last month administrators from Arizona State, Rutgers, and eight other universities toured campuses here and pledged to provide scholarships, start faculty exchanges, and offer other support. The U.S. State Department also has reinstated the Fulbright program in Myanmar, and in February held a fair for Burmese students interested in studying in the United States.
All of the government ministers and university officials who met with the tour’s participants “are interested in relations with American universities,” says Allan E. Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education, which organized last month’s delegation from American higher education. “It was stunning. This was a very encouraging first step that is leading to a lot of next steps.”
Yet those efforts, which were fueled in part by President Obama’s visit to Myanmar in November, can do only so much. The problems facing Myanmar’s higher-education system run deep and will take years to fix. What’s more, the flood of offers to help, which also are coming from Europe, Australia, the World Bank, and elsewhere, may overwhelm Burmese officials.
“It is like they are standing in front of a tennis-ball machine and being bombarded, and meanwhile they are trying to run a country,” says Sarah H. Cleveland, a professor of constitutional and human rights at Columbia University’s law school, who visited Myanmar in February. “There is so much need.”
Decades of Decay
During the military rule, which began in 1962 and ended in 2011, Myanmar’s academic capabilities were hobbled. Professors who conducted research unacceptable to the state were fired. Libraries were gutted or left bereft of new books for decades. Academics had almost no contact with foreign scholars. Most campuses, even that of the University of Yangon, long considered the country’s best, were allowed to decay, becoming overgrown with weeds and full of dilapidated buildings.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who is now a member of Parliament, is overseeing a parliamentary committee focused on changing the laws that govern higher education, including giving universities more autonomy and overhauling the college entrance exam, which now forces students into particular majors on the basis of test scores. (The Ministry of Education did not respond to requests seeking information about the reform work.)
For foreign universities, the most pertinent question is: Where to begin assisting a higher-education system that is in such need? So far, real support has been modest.
For example, American University will provide scholarships for two Burmese students to complete an online master’s degree in international affairs. Northern Illinois University and the University of Washington, along with Rutgers and Arizona State, are forming a consortium to assist Burmese universities in rebuilding their libraries.
“We should engage, but we need to engage with caution,” says Carola Weil, dean of American University’s School of Professional and Extended Studies, who visited Myanmar on the trip organized by the Institute of International Education. “This is not easy stuff.”
Part of the issue is lack of funds. Myanmar has little money to dedicate to reforming higher education, and budget cuts at universities in the United States have constrained overseas efforts. The U.S. Agency for International Development is expected to offer financial support to higher-education work in the country, and some private foundations are kicking in money. But to really make a dent in the problem, a large investment is needed.
“Let’s be under no illusions,” says Jacques Fremont, director of the Open Society Foundations’ international higher-education program, which provides grants for scholars to teach at the Universities of Yangon and Mandalay and to help the country build an electronic library database. “It is one thing to have universities come and exchange faculty members. It is another thing to overhaul an entire higher-education system. It will take millions and millions of dollars.”
Pamela Cranston, vice provost for international programs at the Johns Hopkins University, agrees that money is tight. The university has secured outside funds for small efforts, like sending faculty members to run medical workshops at two Burmese universities. But a plan to create a center to improve graduate education at Yangon is on hold until a donor steps forward. “There is a lot of discussion. There is a lot of will. There is a lot of interest,” Ms. Cranston says. “But there is no funding to make it happen yet.”
A ‘Hierarchical Culture’
Aside from monetary woes, there are other, more endemic, obstacles in trying to revitalize an academic culture that has long been oppressed.
Marcus Brand, who advises the United Nations Development Programme in Myanmar on democratic governance and other issues, recently taught in Yangon’s law department on a fellowship sponsored by the Open Society Foundations. “In my first class, I asked a few questions, and no one raised their hands,” Mr. Brand says. “After an hour of trying, I said, ‘If anyone is alive here, can you please raise your hand?’ I thought it was at least a start.”
Education officials in Myanmar, he says, have their work cut out for them. “They have to build up a whole new generation of people who think differently—not just thinking what their superiors will think about this, but who are able to think for themselves, to question authority. Now it is a very hierarchical culture.”
That culture also affects institutional partnerships. For Burmese universities to forge collaborations with foreign partners, even to accept a visiting scholar, they have to ask permission from a government minister or sometimes even the country’s president, which can be a lengthy process.
And there is still the overriding concern of what will happen if Myanmar’s steps toward democracy falter and dictatorship returns. Some American institutions have expressed reticence at becoming too involved without guarantees. Bard College, for instance, has put on hold plans to open a liberal-arts program in Myanmar until the government develops new education laws.
Despite the challenges, several university administrators in the United States say they are dedicated to helping as best they can.
Christopher McCord, dean of Northern Illinois’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, was on the recent Institute of International Education trip to Myanmar. While the group was visiting a university outside Mandalay, he met with Burmese faculty members who wanted to discuss environmental issues.
“It mattered so desperately to them that I understand what their research questions were and that I could tell them how, this minute, what NIU could do to help them move forward,” he says. “I have never visited a university where people were so overwhelmingly concerned that they wanted to make sure we knew what they needed, and that we could give them a glimmer of hope. I almost felt like I had a moral obligation to help.”
