Chechens Continue To Seek Higher Education

The January 30 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education (website https://chronicle.com/) has an article by Byron MacWilliams on the struggle to keep university studies alive in Grozny. In a city where students still risk their lives simply by coming to class every day, he finds rays of hope: Paradoxically, the lack of economic opportunities has made academic study more attractive. Enrollment in Chechen State University rose last year to about 8,000 full-time or part-time students. Many professors have fled the republic, or have found jobs with international humanitarian organizations, but younger scholars have taken their places. One instructor opined that “the system of education, in contrast to everything else, has shown itself to be the sturdiest thing in the entire Chechen republic.”