Rebuilding the Iraqi higher education system will have to be done by degrees because while funds are available and progress has been made, goodwill and hard work must battle insurgent assassins and years of decline.
"I fear for my life as a professor," said Salwa al-Awwadi, who teaches genetic engineering at the University of Baghdad. "When I walk in the street I am a target."
At least 49 academics have been murdered since the fall of former leader Saddam Hussein in April 2003, according to UN figures, while political scientist Whamid Nadhmi puts the figure around 80.
Nadhmi and his colleagues will see their salaries doubled next month as authorities seek to plug a brain drain, but their libraries have been ravaged by looting and arson, and even obsolete laboratory equipment has vanished.
"They've just been hanging on by their fingernails," said US archaeology professor Elizabeth Stone, describing the hand-to-mouth existence of academics who once drove taxis to supplement salaries equivalent to 10 dollars a month.
In July, their pay will reach 300-1,000 dollars depending on qualifications and seniority.
But universities really thrive on knowledge, and Iraq's academic centres have fallen far behind as conflict and sanctions prevented professors from keeping abreast of vast changes since the 1991 Gulf War.
"Libraries here are empty," said a program director at the USAID agency, which is getting teachers back in the mainstream through programs in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, and by sending students to study in the United States.
Lucky agricultural candidates have gone to the University of Hawaii, law students to De Paul University in Chicago, and budding archaeologists to study with Stone at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook.
"I have to say I'm really pleased with them," she said. "They've been working really hard -- I think they were shocked at how hard they were expected to work."
Following intensive English classes her four students "took a full course load in the spring semester. They all passed all of their courses."
One might stay on for a PhD, but once they graduate "I think most of the others probably want to go home," where Stone hopes they will join the staff of the Iraq National Museum or faculties across the country.
Generating such exchanges is a goal for many professors in Iraq, including Awaadi who cited the Italian- and Indian-based International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology as a group she would want to work with.
Nabil Sadun Aathari, who teaches business administration, said he pores over economic and business reports from Harvard and Oxford, but added that a meeting with a delegation from the elite US school did not lead to much.
"They sent some second-hand computers. Some saw it as an honor, others as an insult."
Computers were cited by Stone as an area where her students made "extraordinary progress".
"Two of them took a quite sophisticated course in how to analyse satellite imagery and geographic information systems," hurdling technical and linguistic obstacles.
"When they were told they should unzip (uncompress) a file they didn't know what that meant."
Obstacles remain nonetheless, including the cost of studying in the US, which she put at around 15,000-20,000 dollars a year, since SUNY gives the Iraqis free tuition.
USAID estimated a student's annual budget at 50,000 dollars and guarantees one year of study, counting on other donors to take over after that.
The agency has dispersed 20.7 million dollars since the spring of 2003 on higher education in Iraq, where scores of programs vie for funding.
Its program director said colleges of education should be a priority and that new campuses were less crucial than getting more teachers and students together.
"People can learn under a tree," he noted, as demonstrated by figures like Buddha and Isaac Newton.
Others feel restocking labs and renovating classrooms and cafeterias are key to restoring pride in a system that was once a magnet for the entire Middle East.
Going to an extreme, an engineering professor at the University of Mosul reportedly said: "It's great we were looted, now we have new equipment."
Stone, however, urged that top academics be trained to infuse Iraqi universities with the ethic for "absolutely serious" work, warning that the best and brightest would otherwise be tempted by job offers abroad.
"And then", she warned, "you may not have higher education in Iraq."
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