BAGHDAD, 28 February 2007 — The Iraqi minister was at a loss. “What can we do?” he asked in a trembling voice after a woman suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest at a Baghdad business college, slaughtering 40 people.

“We cannot search everybody,” he said, recounting how the sectarian violence gripping the country has driven away students and teachers alike, threatening the futures of tens of thousands of young Iraqis.

Higher Education Minister Abed Dhiab Al-Ujaili, who describes himself as an “optimist” despite Iraq’s relentless descent into chaos, said the blast came as students were preparing for examinations.

Security officials said most of those killed in Sunday’s blast at the entrance to Mustansiriyah University’s School of Economy and Administration in eastern Baghdad were students.

Such acts of violence, linked to attacks in which lecturers and professors are deliberately targeted, have taken a heavy toll on higher education in war-ravaged Iraq, according to students and teaching staff.

Nevertheless, Ujaili says student numbers have in fact increased to around 380,000, but he acknowledges that at least 195 university professors have been killed and another 60 kidnapped since the sectarian violence erupted a year ago. Thousands more academics have fled the country, he said.

With the academic year severely disrupted, the ministry has announced that mid-term exams that are due about now can be postponed if necessary.

“We have a standard: The syllabus must be covered and the actual attendance must be at least 30 weeks of the year,” Ujaili said.

“We gave colleges the flexibility to choose the date for mid-term exams because some colleges were late.” Daily bombings and mortar and gun attacks in Baghdad have made students and teachers fear for their lives.

In Baghdad universities, class attendance varies from 20 to 70 percent, depending on the perceived danger level.

“It is not good,” a university lecturer from the University of Baghdad, who asked not to be named, told AFP a few days before the School of Economy and Administration blast.

“You know the circumstances. It is very difficult to work. The road is not safe, the university is not safe,” added the 63-year-old lecturer.

She risks going only once a week to give classes at her campus, one of five public universities in Baghdad, in a bid to minimize the dangers. “I usually change the day and I have a bodyguard,” she said.

When the universities are affected “society collapses,” she added. “We need training very, very much because we were very closed (during Saddam Hussein’s rule) and did not know what was happening in the world.” She said her students, both Shiites and Sunnis, get along well. “The problem is political, it is not social. Students do get along. There is no problem to live together. This is Iraq — we already did so.” A political science student spelt out some of the hardships of trying to attain a degree in a country sliding toward civil war.

“This year is very difficult. One of our professors was killed. We are very, very afraid. The university has received many threats, sometimes aimed at Sunnis, sometimes aimed at Shiites,” said the 25-year-old third-year student who also asked not to be named.

“I have a Sunni friend and we cannot leave each other,” she added.

Mohammed, 28, gave up his job as an assistant lecturer at the university because he said it was too dangerous. “It is not only the campus, it is also getting there. There are checkpoints where you show an identity card. We have to say where we come from, to which tribe we belong. This can be fatal.” Higher Education Minister Ujaili said that because of the violence, his ministry was allowing “flexibility” in the system under which the university a student may attend is governed by grades.

This, he said, has resulted in Sunnis fleeing mainly Shiite universities in Baghdad for Mosul, a Sunni city in northern Iraq, while Shiites are quitting the Sunni province of Anbar for Baghdad. The reverse is also taking place.

“My brother was accepted in Mosul... one of the best universities in Iraq. But he did not go because he is scared. He will study in Kut,” said one Shiite student.