The University Students and the Iraqi Future

In this piece, I am writing about my personal experience in the university education. Actually, I have been teaching for 15 years. Thus, I think it is enough time for any academic to produce realistic ideas about the significance of this sector in the life of Iraqi people.
In the eyes of others, I might be wrong or too much pessimistic. However, this will not stop me from stating what I believe in.
Here, I am not telling the truth to harm my students or even my country that I love so much. I am writing to highlight the points, which make a challenge to the future.
Unless we solve the systematic imbalances in the universities, students will not be able to become a source of change. The majority of them are inactive, unambitious, and not creative. In addition, they are easily controlled by the others, and they are hugely mentored by social media. Though, we need to ask: How could we change all this gloomy picture?
As long as students focus on the academic textbooks, they will not be able to think critically about their futuristic life or their role that they must play politically and socially. They will also continue thinking that the world is a reflection of this simple kind of education. They can't believe that the other nations live in another way conflicting with the clan standards that have become rooted in the Iraqi universities.
Students of the universities constitute an important factor in the election. According to the former Iraqi minister of higher education, Dr. Hussein Al-Shihristani, we have more than 700000 students in the universities. Despite this high number of students or electors, the political parties that have ruled the country since 2003 still control the electoral scene. For sure, this is not a normal thing, and there is something raising concerns.
In case students participate in the political life positively, they can become real changemakers who have the ability to reshape the future in favor of Iraq. Thus, politicians fear from this strength, and they are working for countering it. This can't be done without manipulating the awareness of students. Sectarianism is the shortest way to achieve this goal.
The electoral votes of the students always go to the sectarian parties. This is a part of the electoral game in Iraq. And it is a proof of wrecking the educational system that now does not have the ability to produce new institutions to undermine the traditional determinisms deciding the results of the election in Iraq.
Today, we have a new sectarian generation in our universities. Every Iraqi city has its university. The students of such university are mostly from the same religion, sect, or from the same nationalism. As such, the students of the universities located in the mainly Shiite cities do not have a connection with the university students of the Sunni cities. The same thing can be observed when we compare the universities of the Iraqi Kurdistan region with their counterparts in the other parts of Iraq.
Thus, we are now facing a new problem: Consolidation the sectarianism of the educational system. This will lead to increase the feeling of alienation among these separated universities and then the national identity will suffer from more setbacks. Thus, no one of those students will trust the other. Accordingly, they will continue supporting the sectarian parties. Education must fight this vandalism through the peaceful ways and the new scientific approaches.
Regardless the harassments of Saddam's Ba'ath Party, which governed Iraq 1979-2003, the universities were like a small Iraq, where all nationalities, religions, and sects were meeting in one place. This led to various relations of friendship and resulted in many marriages between the Shiites, the Sunnis, the Arabs, and the Kurds.
Unfortunately, we have lost this advantage, and we are currently confronting a dilemma of managing the other mixed universities in Baghdad, Mosul, and Kirkuk. They have witnessed many tensions among their students based on the sectarian and nationalistic divisions that Iraq has suffered from since 2003.
Students are a positive power. They can do many important things for their country. At least, they can force the political parties to change their policies, their leaders, and their way of dealing with the state and the fortune. Students can also form a non-sectarian block against terrorism, the governmental corruption, and the fundamentalism. Students are the Changemakers who are excluded from the political life in modern Iraq.
Finally, we can say that reforming the educational system is a vital input to give the Iraqi university students the opportunity to make this change come true.
Diyari Salih is an Iraqi academic, Ph.D. in Political Geography, Baghdad, Post-Doctorate in International Relations, Warsaw, Focuses on the Geopolitical Issues in Iraq.