The Asian University for Women in Bangladesh has expelled a number of Afghan students, a move that has heightened concern over the loss of one of the last remaining educational opportunities for girls and women in Afghanistan, where access to education remains restricted.<\/p>\n
Two students who spoke to Etilaat Roz said the university is preventing at least 160 Afghan students from continuing their studies. According to Sabera Mohammadi, the university also arranged her plane ticket and informed her family that their daughter would be sent back to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n
Another student, Zahra Mohammadi, said she was sent back to Afghanistan four days ago and that she knew of at least eight other students who had also been expelled. The students said some students are still on campus and have asked university officials to provide a reasonable explanation for the decision, but no public explanation has been given so far.<\/p>\n
Sabera Mohammadi said the university cited her low final semester average as the reason for her expulsion. She said that after the attack on Syed-ul-Shuhada school and the death of her younger sister, she sometimes suffers seizures, and that she had experienced the same problem about 15 days before her final exams.<\/p>\n
She said the severity of the seizures led the university to send her to hospital, where she was admitted for two days. She added that although doctors recommended she remain in hospital, she was discharged so she could sit her exams, but due to mental and psychological problems she was unable to achieve good grades.<\/p>\n
Sabera also said the university first suggested she take a semester off and return to Afghanistan, but after she rejected the proposal, she was summoned to the university office and told she had to go back to Afghanistan. Zahra Mohammadi also said her expulsion was attributed to “lack of progress.”<\/p>\n
According to Zahra, she initially was not familiar with English, but the university did not provide a suitable academic programme to address this problem. She said that after being admitted to the university, she was not assigned any classes for a year and a half, and was only given classes in her last two semesters before being expelled.<\/p>\n
The two students said they were unaware of the reasons for the expulsion of other students, because the university meets each student separately and explains each case privately. They added that they asked university officials to allow them to continue their studies, but the request was not accepted.<\/p>\n
The Asian University for Women is an independent international educational institution based in Chittagong, Bangladesh, focused on women’s education in Asia. After the Taliban returned to power, the university had increased its intake of Afghan students; however, the expulsion comes at a time when girls and women in Afghanistan remain barred from schools, universities and medical institutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bangladesh’s Asian University for Women has expelled Afghan students, raising fears over women’s last chance for higher education.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-migrant-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}