University of Maryland University College now offers classes in the war torn nation of Iraq. The faculty keep Kevlar jackets within reach and students carry rifles to class along with their books.
"It makes for a strange college campus," reports The Washington Post, "Cement blast walls, helicopters roaring overhead, packs of wild dogs howling, the risk of mortar and rocket attacks."
Of course these classes are for service members only. This is not the typical cushy semester-long debaucherous jaunt in Western Europe, where privileged students search for sex, drugs, romanticism and their spoiled souls... we assume.
Even on a protected military base, college in a war zone has a makeshift, edgy feel. UMUC faculty teach wherever they can find space. At Victory, a network of bases near Baghdad International Airport that has served as the U.S. military's nerve center in Iraq since 2003, classes have been held in a tent, the back of a chapel and a conference room built in Hussein's former stable for camels and horses.
Hopefully these students are studying foreign policy.
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