Teaching from tents to keep universities open in Gaza

For the academics and students of the Gaza Strip, a university campus is no longer defined by lecture halls or research laboratories. Instead, it is a crowded hospital corridor, a frayed tent, or a fleeting mobile internet connection secured after a gruelling walk.

According to a new report released by the Friends of Palestinian Universities (formerly known as Fobzu), titled Scholasticide in Gaza: The Systematic Destruction of Palestinian Higher Education and the Continuation of Collective Resilience, Gaza’s entire higher education system has faced near-total destruction, with all 19 recognised institutions systematically targeted and rendered non-operational as a result of the Israeli military operations.

The report features conservative yet staggering infrastructure evaluations, incorporating a UNESCO needs assessment conducted in partnership with the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education and AWRAD.

The assessment documented extensive damage across 38 campuses – with 22 completely destroyed and 14 sustaining different levels of damage – revealing that 195 out of 206 assessed buildings were destroyed or severely damaged, with total physical damage to higher education infrastructure alone estimated at US$373 million.

This includes the burning of the Islamic University of Gaza’s central library, which housed over 240,000 books.

Furthermore, the report references the April 2026 Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment by the World Bank, the European Union, and the United Nations, which estimated total damages across Gaza’s entire education sector at a massive US$1.08 billion, with total recovery and reconstruction needs projected at US$4.71 billion.

Amidst this physical erasure, where almost all of Gaza’s 76 cultural centres and 80 public libraries have been destroyed, the human toll is the most staggering, with the killing of more than 1,372 university students and over 246 academics and university staff documented.

Yet, beneath the statistics of physical and human loss lies a profound story of institutional resilience.

Gaza’s universities have refused to cease operations. Through emergency e-learning protocols, localised emergency committees, and sheer willpower, these institutions are fighting to keep their students enrolled and their academic communities intact.

As Gaza’s academics and administrators declared in a recent letter cited in the report: “We built these universities from tents. And from tents, with the support of our friends, we will rebuild them once again.”

Virtual classrooms in a tent

The transition to emergency e-learning has been anything but smooth. Students describe it as an agonising daily battle against displacement, internet blackouts, and profound deprivation.

“My school day consists of trying to organise my time between incredibly difficult daily survival requirements and my studies,” Ehab Mohammed Dalloul, a fourth-year physics student at Al-Azhar University, Gaza, told University World News via online correspondence.

“I study when there is internet or electricity. In the displacement camps or tents, there is no quiet place. I study amid noise and overcrowding.”

Despite these barriers, students view their education as an existential necessity. Elina Yazji, a media and mass communication student who graduated in 2026, notes that simply accessing materials is a monumental task.

“Many students lost their laptops or mobile phones when their homes were bombed,” she told University World News. “We walk long distances and pay exorbitant transportation fees just to reach a spot with a signal strong enough to download a lecture.”

For Yazji, continuing her education is an act of honouring fallen colleagues. “Many journalists lost their lives trying to deliver our message to the world,” she said. “We must continue our education to keep reminding the world of those who sacrificed their lives.”

For students in clinical disciplines, the campus has merged violently with the realities of war. Saed Alqassass, a 25-year-old medical intern at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG), is currently completing his training at Nasser Medical Complex – one of the few remaining functional hospitals in the south.

“We were studying one moment and treating the wounded the next,” Alqassass told University World News via online correspondence.

“We stood in hospital corridors for bedside teaching. We weren’t just learning medicine theoretically; we were seeing it, living it, and practising it in the most severe conditions.”

The physical toll is immense; Alqassass recalls collapsing from severe hunger during a bedside lecture during the height of the famine conditions, completely unable to focus or comprehend the material.

Teaching from a smartphone screen

To keep the academic machinery running, faculty members have undertaken extraordinary measures, entirely revamping their pedagogical approaches to suit a fragmented, traumatised student body.

Dr Sherin Harbi Aldani, a faculty member in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Al-Azhar University, purchases electricity at severely inflated crisis rates – up to 30 shekels per kilowatt – just to charge her phone and a basic lighting battery.

“I record my lectures using the voice recorder app on my phone, then travel to the university where there is a better internet connection to upload them to the educational platform,” she told University World News via online correspondence.

Aldani has adapted to the crisis by utilising flipped-classroom models and interactive audio lectures that students compare to “awareness radio programmes” they can listen to with their families in their tents. When she conducts face-to-face sessions once a week, the scheduled one-hour class often stretches to two hours because the students are so desperate for human connection and a semblance of normalcy.

Assistant Professor Dr Darwish M D Aljakhlab, dean of External Affairs at Islamic University of Gaza, describes the operational reality as a “true miracle”.

“Imagine the visual, psychological, and technical suffering of managing massive academic work, evaluating activities, and grading exams through a small mobile screen,” Aljakhlab told University World News via online correspondence.

Yet, the response from the student body has been overwhelming. According to Aljakhlab, the number of new postgraduate students enrolling in university programmes during the war reached roughly three times pre-war levels.

“They fled from the cruelty of their circumstances ... toward education,” he said.

Safeguarding academic standards

While emergency e-learning has enabled Gaza’s universities to continue operating, maintaining academic quality and credible student assessment remains one of the sector’s greatest challenges. University leaders and faculty insist that continuity alone is not enough; preserving academic standards is essential if students are to graduate with qualifications that retain their value and recognition.

For academics, this has required an unusual balance between flexibility and rigour. Aljakhlab said faculty members have adapted assessment procedures to account for repeated internet disruptions, displacement, and the psychological strain experienced by students.

“We gave students repeated opportunities to take tests and facilitated retakes for those whose results were affected by internet disconnections or sudden displacement,” he explained. “The goal is to provide a highly flexible educational environment that accommodates coercive circumstances without depriving students of their right to education.”

Faculty members have also redesigned evaluation methods. Aldani said she increasingly relies on assignments and research projects linked directly to classroom discussions rather than traditional examinations.

The approach, she notes, helps assess genuine understanding while reducing the impact of technical disruptions and the growing use of artificial intelligence tools.

“I am keen to provide maximum facilities for students to complete their research projects,” she said. “But this flexibility does not mean compromising scientific quality standards; rather, it is a search for a balance that maintains the academic level.”

University leaders argue that preserving academic quality over the longer term will require stronger engagement with the international higher education community.

Professor Dr Asad Asaad, president of the Islamic University of Gaza, said the university’s ability to complete four academic semesters and a summer session during the war demonstrates that institutions remain operational. However, he warns that continued academic isolation poses a serious threat to quality assurance, accreditation, and academic development.

“We are an authentic and organic part of the international academic education system,” Asaad told University World News via online correspondence. Calling for academic twinning arrangements, virtual mobility programmes, and deeper institutional partnerships, he added: “We see the global academic community as an immunity and a guarantee for educational institutions in Gaza.”

Surviving the financial abyss

While the dedication of the faculty is keeping classes running, the institutions themselves face a severe financial cliff.

The Friends of Palestinian University (FPU) report highlights the structural neglect of Palestinian higher education by the international aid sector, revealing that direct international aid to Palestinian higher education institutions has averaged less than US$10 million per year for two decades.

The report demands that direct support for university operations, faculty salaries, and student enrolment be integrated into immediate humanitarian response frameworks.

The leadership of Gaza’s universities confirms this dire financial reality. Professor Dr Omar Milad, president of Al-Azhar University, reports that while the university has managed to enrol around 16,000 students (including 8,000 new students), the collapse of the local economy has devastated the university's fee-dependent revenue model.

“There are debts owed by students totalling approximately JOD 32 million (US$45.01 million),” Milad told UWN. To accommodate families, the university currently asks students to pay a maximum of only 30% of their fees, yet half of the student body cannot afford even that.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking administrative bottleneck involves graduation. “We have approximately 5,500 graduates who cannot receive their university degrees because of unpaid fees totalling about JOD 7.5 million,” Milad said.

Releasing these certificates is his most urgent priority, as it would immediately inject newly qualified doctors, nurses, and engineers into Gaza’s desperate workforce.

Faculty members are bearing the brunt of this financial collapse, often working entirely without salaries.

“Academics are paying from their own pockets and from their children’s sustenance to secure transportation, charge phones, and access the internet so that lectures are not interrupted,” Aljakhlab said, urging the global community to provide emergency funding for academic salaries.

Rebuilding on Palestinian terms

As discussions of post-war reconstruction begin, Gaza’s academic leadership has a clear warning for the international community: Do not attempt to bypass existing institutions.

This sentiment is strongly echoed in the FPU report, which insists that all recovery support must strengthen, not replace, Gaza’s existing accredited universities, rejecting any initiative that attempts to build parallel institutions.

Asaad is unequivocal on this point. “The Palestinian community... stands as an impenetrable wall behind our national educational institutions,” he said. “It rejects any attempts by external parties to bypass the existing local institutions or replace them with parallel entities. Local universities hold the original right, and support must pass through them to enhance their resilience and rebuild them, not to bypass them.”

Instead of parallel structures, Gaza’s academics are calling for immediate integration into the global academic community to break what Asaad calls “academic isolation”.

The requests are highly specific and actionable. Universities in Gaza are asking international institutions for virtual mobility programs for students and staff, genuine academic twinning, joint research projects, and access to global research databases with waivers for scientific publishing fees.

“We do not ask for special privileges,” Alqassass, the medical intern, said. “We ask only for the minimum that allows the educational process to continue in a humane and fair manner.”

This sentiment is shared by Dalloul, who added: “We do not ask for pity, but for the opportunity to continue. Protecting education today means protecting the future of an entire generation.”