Student Union
- By Zohra Moradi
Pandemic Halts Schooling for Afghan Students
Students in Afghanistan have lacked access to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, as schools have remained closed and the virus has not been controlled.
"The real tragedy is that over 3,000 students in Kabul who come from poor families simply do not have the ability to pursue online education during the pandemic when schools are closed," said Aziz Royesh, a teacher and founder of the Marefat High School in Kabul.
"They don't have the internet or mobiles. And even if they did, Kabul has electricity for only a few hours a day," he explained.
Royesh is one of the top 10 finalists worldwide, of 5,000 nominees, for the prestigious Global Teacher Prize of the Varkey Foundation in London. He was able to attend school until age 10, when he fled to Pakistan after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
Schools in Afghanistan shut down in March 2020, when the COVID-19 virus sparked a pandemic, leaving 10 million students out of school. Of these, 300,000 were public and private university students.
Not all have internet, electricity
Students in big cities such as Kabul and Herat have better security and a few hours of electricity most days, and more privileged students have access to the internet, although it is often weak and unreliable. But in the countryside, students do not have the same security, power is very limited and the internet is almost nonexistent, they report.
According to Save the Children, this is in addition to the 3.7 million who were not in school prior to COVID-19. Across six Afghan provinces, only 28.6% of children can access distance learning programs through TV; 13.8%, through the radio; and 0.2%, through the internet.
Schools reopened in September 2020 and then closed for the winter break in November. They reopened in March 2021, only to be shut down again for two weeks in May 2021 in 16 of 34 provinces, including Kabul, because of further outbreaks.
Students lack access to the internet. The World Bank estimates that only 14% of Afghans use the internet.
Rona Yousufi, a rising Afghan junior at Asian University for Women in Bangladesh, said when the pandemic started, students were forced to leave campus immediately. She moved back to Kabul to continue her education online.
"I missed the first week of classes until I got Wi-Fi in my home, but the connection was really poor with consistent power outages. I missed most of my classes, and one hour of homework took me up to two to three hours to do because of the poor connection," Yousufi said.
But she said she is one of the luckier ones. She could continue her education online, while many students who attend her university could not because they come from poor families and cannot afford Wi-Fi.
"There are around 150 Afghan students who go to this university, and 60 to 70 of these were able to access Wi-Fi. The rest had to halt their education until they returned to the university," Yousufi said.
"I have a big family. My parents, five sisters and a brother and I live in a small two-bedroom house. I share a room with my six siblings, and I don't have any place to study and take my classes. I get disrupted during my classes by my younger brother and sisters. The lack of electricity is another challenge. I stay up all night waiting for electricity to come back so I can get some work done."
'I will be a year behind'
Mohammad Reza Nazari, a recent high school graduate in Kabul, is struggling to get an education during COVID-19. He was taking English classes at Star Educational Society when the center shut down, putting a stop to his education.
"I was taking a TOFEL class to pass the exam and apply for schools abroad, but unfortunately the limited electricity and poor Wi-Fi connection prevented me from doing online study," he said, referring to the Test for English as a Foreign Language that many U.S. colleges and universities require for acceptance.
"I get really sad and depressed when I remember that I will be a year behind other students my age," he said.
Khodadad Jafari from Daikundi, Afghanistan, is a student at Star Educational Society. He moved to Kabul three years ago to learn English so he could study abroad and find a part-time job to support himself and his family back in his village.
"I came to Kabul with a lot of hope, but I had to return to the village with all my wishes destroyed," Jafari said.
He tried to stay in his village, but his drive to get an education led him back to Kabul.
"I have access with my mobile to some phone data in Kabul that I did not have at home. I learn English by watching YouTube videos and from websites, but I have limited data and resources," Jafari said.
Maryam Darwish is a high school senior in Kabul. Since her school shut down, she has found it hard to study by herself.
"I can study social studies, but I need someone to help me with science and math. I try to spend my day drawing, reading fiction and going over my social studies books," Darwish said. "I want to continue my education online, but I am always worried and sleepless."
"It's hard to overstate the impact that COVID has had on the continuity of education in Afghanistan. So many students lost nearly all of 2020 to school closures, and now schools are closed again for the foreseeable future," said Shabana Basij-Rasikh, co-founder of the School of Leadership, Afghanistan, in Kabul.
"SOLA, as a boarding school, is fortunate in that we've been able to institute health and safety procedures that have allowed us to operate throughout this year without any outbreaks on our campus, but our model is unique in Afghanistan," she said. "COVID is the great thief that has robbed millions, literally millions, of Afghan girls and boys of their education."
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- By Stella Hsu
Reports of visa checks, deportations worry Chinese STEM students in US
Geopolitical tensions and growing competition in tech between the United States and China appear to be spilling over into academia despite commitments from the world’s two biggest economies to boost people-to-people exchanges.
The United States remains the top choice for Chinese students seeking to study abroad with nearly 300,000 studying in American colleges and universities during the 2022-2023 school year. But reports of some cases that students and professors are facing extra scrutiny while passing through immigration and the deportation of others are raising concerns.
For Chen Xiaojin, a doctoral student studying semiconductor materials at a university in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, it has been six years since she returned to her hometown of Beijing.
At first, it was the COVID-19 pandemic that kept her from going home. But over the past two years, she has been deterred by accounts of Chinese students majoring in science and engineering being required to reapply for their visas upon returning to China.
She also says she is worried by reports over the past six months of Chinese students being deported, even at nearby Dulles Airport.
"My current research is relatively sensitive, and my boss [adviser] is getting funds from the U.S. Department of Defense, making it even more sensitive,” she told VOA. "I am afraid that I won't be able to return after I go back [to China]."
Chen says that if she did return to China, she would have to apply for a new visa.
In a report late last month, Bloomberg said it had found at least 20 Chinese students and scholars with valid visas who were deported at U.S. Customs since November and barred from reentry. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency does not release relevant data.
Immigration attorney Dan Berger represented one Chinese student who was deported late last year. He tells VOA Mandarin that the student studied biological sciences at Yale University and was about to complete her doctorate.
She visited her family in China and got a new visa but was deported by customs at Dulles Airport and barred from reentering the country for five years. Berger said he did not see anything suspicious in the transcript of the conversation between the student and the customs officer.
"We have seen what seems like a pattern over the last six months of Chinese PhD students being turned around…. more than I've seen in quite a while," he said.
Matthew Brazil, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, said neither country seems willing to explain the situation. However, he believes that in most cases, the United States must have valid reasons for blocking visa holders from entering the country.
In some cases, the student’s background may not match what is written on the visa application. In other cases, customs agents may also find something that the State Department missed, and once they see it, they are responsible for taking action.
"I wish the Chinese side would be specific about their students who were refused entry,” he said. “The fact that both sides are mum on details and that the Chinese side is engaged with the usual angry rhetoric means that each has security concerns. And that says to me that there was good reason for the U.S. to stop these particular applicants."
Brazil also sees a connection between the entry denials and export control regulations issued by the United States in October 2022 that restrict China's ability to obtain advanced computing chips, develop and maintain supercomputers, and manufacture advanced semiconductors.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is one of the law enforcement agencies authorized to investigate violations of export control regulations, he said.
"Beijing's intelligence agencies are known to focus attention on PRC [People's Republic of China] students and scientists headed abroad who study or work on dual-use technologies controlled under the Export Administration Act — compelling Chinese students and scientists to report on what they've learned when they return to China on holiday,” he said. “This has been true for decades."
Bill Drexel, a fellow for the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, said the U.S. government did find some cases where students tried to steal strategic technology for China.
"I think it would both not be surprising that they found some really questionable or incriminating evidence for some students,” he said. “It would also not be surprising if, in their hunt for really solid evidence, they also may have made some mistakes on other students.”
Drexel adds that “it’s just kind of an unfortunate fact of the time that we live in and the tactics that the CCP uses when it comes to these measures."
In a post on X in early May, U.S. ambassador to China Nicholas Burns tried to dispel concerns about visas and entry to the United States for students and scholars. In the post, he said "99.9% of Chinese students holding visas encounter no issues upon entering the United States.”
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Monday, Burns said it is China that is making it impossible to promote people-to-people ties. Burns told the Journal that students attending events sponsored by the United States in China have been interrogated and intimidated.
He also said that since U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping held their summit in San Francisco last year, China’s Ministry of State Security and other agencies had interfered with Chinese citizens’ participation at some 61 events.
At a regular briefing on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning dismissed those accusations, saying that they did not “reflect reality" and that went against key understandings reached by both countries’ presidents in San Francisco.
“The United States, under the pretext of 'national security,' unjustifiably harasses, interrogates, and deports Chinese students in the U.S., causing them significant harm and creating a severe chilling effect,” Mao said. “The image of the United States in the minds of the Chinese people fundamentally depends on the actions of the United States itself.”
Drexel said he believes Burns’ comments about visas and students' willingness to study in the U.S. still ring true.
“On balance, it's still the case that American universities are overwhelmingly warm towards Chinese students and want them in large numbers," he said.
However, Berger, the immigration lawyer, is concerned about the chilling effect recent cases involving Chinese students could have.
"In general, we are being more careful about advising Chinese graduate students in STEM fields about traveling and letting them know that there is some small risk,” he said.
Even though the risk is small, it does seem to be real at the moment, he said.
Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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