THIRD-YEAR economics student Inna Shmarai is kind of stressing out these days.

It’s not just that exams are coming up soon at the National University in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk and some of the stuff she’s been studying this term has been really complicated.

What’s adding to the slight 19-year-old’s worries is that ever since her university was taken over by armed separatist fighters in east Ukraine she isn’t sure exactly what degree she’ll receive when she eventually does graduate — and whether it will actually be worth anything.

“Mostly we are concerned about our degrees because of the political situation and the war,” Shmarai told AFP.

“Then you can add to that worries about the fact that exams and grades are on their way too,” she added, as she headed toward a lecture with a pile of books under her arm.

Shmarai, and thousands of other students like her in the war-torn region, are caught at the center of a tug-of-war.

Since the insurgents seized power in a bloody conflict that began in April, they have cemented their grip over everyday life in the towns they run.

That has now expanded to the education system and universities — with institutes made to switch over to the rebel’s self-declared people’s republic.

Technically, the university Shmarai is attending should not even be open.

As the fighting raged and separatists took over several months back, the state-run Donetsk National University officially closed down and shifted its campus some 800 km west to the town of Vinnytsia, deep in government-held territory.

But not everyone has moved. While the rector left another, rebel-approved, head took over and many professors and students have remained.

Now the university, unrecognized by the authorities in Kiev, has carried on giving lessons and readying for exams.

“We call the other university a clone,” says deputy rector Alexander Maznev dismissively of the government-backed institute now completing its first term in Vinnytsia.

“The other one may become a legal entity but it will never be a real university.”

However, despite the confidence, it is the universities in the rebel-held territory that are struggling for legitimacy.