Fares, a 29-year-old from Kfar Nabal in Idlib province, was preparing for his final university exams when the security situation there made traveling to campus impossible.
After years in medical school, he had just completed his training at the Ibn Rashed Hospital in Aleppo. He planned to specialize in the heart and heart catheter, but was forced to drop those plans when it became impossible to travel to Aleppo for his final exams.
The journey was just 80 km, but constant shelling made it too risky.
“Only two of my 12 colleagues from all around Syria [sat for] the exams,” Fares said. He is now trying to find a job to support five family members in the Turkish border city of Reyhanli, which has been flooded by refugees.
He is well aware that without any formal certificate or proof of education, all of his studies are all but worthless on the Turkish job market.
There is no official centralized documentation of the names and specializations of higher-education students, many of whom have been unable to complete their degrees over the last three years.
“Had I been able to complete my exams and get the certificate, it would have been easier. I could have found a job in Turkey or another country,” Fares said. With employment prospects limited, he is undecided on whether to stay in Turkey or return to Syria.
Near Fares lives Ali, 22, who was a third-year French language student at Aleppo University when fighting forced him to leave his village, in the Jabal al-Zawiyeh region of Idlib province. Rebels forced the Syrian army out of the town, along with pro-regime militiamen and residents like Ali who were fighting alongside them.
He retreated to Aleppo province, but did not dare go to his university, fearing retaliation.
Today, he works in an iron factory, where he spends any spare moment browsing the internet in search of a way to continue his studies at a Turkish state university.
“My six attempts at enrollment were all brought to a halt when the Turkish universities asked me to show my records from Aleppo University, which I cannot [go back and] get because of the terrible security situation,” he said.
The financial cost of traveling from one Turkish city to another to apply to universities, only to be rejected, is another burden. Ali said that given the current situation, he wishes he had learned a trade back home in Syria, instead of seeking a degree.
“Should I have learned a profession like carpentry or ironworks when a child, I would not have to face these hardships today. Now, I’m neither an expert carpenter nor a teacher as I am supposed to be. Now I’m nothing,” he said.
Students in opposition-held areas have been increasingly left behind during the course of the conflict, both by the regime and by new opposition authorities that have sprung up. Compared to the attention they’ve bestowed on the formation of Islamic courts and relief societies, education has received little support.
The Office of the National Higher Commission for Learning and Higher Education, under the umbrella of the opposition National Coalition, is considered the only body which could be responsible for the stabilization of the education sector in rebel held-areas.
Jalal al-Din al-Khanji, its vice president, has talked about obstacles facing them, including funding and poor coordination.
There are large numbers of former students like Ali and Fares. The boys estimated that no more that 20 percent of university students remain in Syrian classrooms.
Neither Ali nor his peers had heard about any action taken by the National Coalition to deal with their cases, or even to keep track of them.
“If we seek to build an institution-based Syria, dependent on efficient and educated people, most of those capable people who have degrees will be from the supporters of the present regime, who were able to continue their university,” Fares said.
“Meanwhile, those who made this revolution to get rid of the present regime and its problems will be without education. How do you imagine it to turn out?”