Five years after the Taliban retook Afghanistan, male students at Kabul University and other institutions describe a collapsing education system where they are beaten for minor rule breaches, taught by unqualified lecturers, and forced to attend religious lectures that replace academic classes.
Beaten for Wearing Trousers
Hashmat, a student at Kabul University, says male students are required to grow beards and wear traditional Afghan clothes. Those who fall short are punished. “I recently saw a classmate beaten for wearing trousers,” he told the Guardian. “They look at you before they listen to you. If your appearance is wrong, you are already in trouble before the class begins.”
Students are required to attend religious lectures and pray in public every day, sometimes for two hours at a time. The lectures are about Islam, conduct and obedience and are not optional. In some cases, they are held during time that would otherwise be used for regular academic courses. “I am missing my actual classes to sit in a lecture about obeying,” Hashmat says. “Everyone talks about the girls who were banned, but nobody talks about what is happening to the boys who were allowed to stay.”
Loss of Debate and Questioning
Another student, Qader, studying in central Afghanistan, says the problem is not only weak teaching but also the disappearance of debate and questioning from the classroom. “We are expected to listen, not to question. Since the fall of Kabul, the university has lost its purpose. It feels more like a madrassa now — a place where curiosity is banned and remaining silent ordered.”
Hashmat studies journalism, a subject shaped by digital tools, online platforms, verification, ethics and technology. But he says his lecturer struggles to use PowerPoint. “He is teaching us about the modern world while struggling to use PowerPoint in the class. How can you teach journalism technology if you do not understand what technology is?”
Sharp Contraction in Higher Education
More than 20 students interviewed by phone at public and private universities in seven provinces — Kabul, Kandahar, Helmand, Nangarhar, Bamiyan, Balkh and Wardak — gave similar accounts. According to Unesco, Afghanistan’s higher-education sector contracted sharply between 2019 and 2024, with female enrolment down to zero by 2024 and male enrolment falling from 310,369 in 2019 to 188,957 in 2024.
Kabul University still looks like a university from the outside, but students say much of what makes it a university has been hollowed out. Experienced professors have left the country, stopped teaching or been pushed aside. Ideologically aligned Taliban lecturers have been hired in their place. In some departments, recent graduates and even undergraduates are teaching.
Unqualified Lecturers and Lost Purpose
Hashmat points to one lecturer who finished his own degree only two years earlier. “Now he is standing in front of us. It is clear he does not know more than we do.” Zalmay, a student in Helmand province, describes a similar decline: “Some teachers come to class and only read from old notes. When we ask questions, they cannot explain beyond what is written in front of them. We are university students, but sometimes it feels like we are back in high school.”
A former Kabul University professor, who requested anonymity because he fears retaliation, confirms the students’ accounts and says the loss of qualified lecturers has weakened universities that are still expected to produce graduates.
Loss of Hope for the Future
After the fall of Kabul, Hashmat says two of his younger brothers dropped out of school. They no longer believe education would help them find jobs or build a future. “They do not believe education will help them any more. I am reaching the same conclusion and find it hard to attend classes.”
Even on campus, journalism students feel hostility. They are studying an occupation that has been restricted, lost professionals and treated with suspicion. Many independent news outlets have closed. Hashmat says he and his classmates have been called shaitan (Satan) by their teachers. “We are studying journalism in a country where journalism barely exists. What are we being trained for?”
Some students still attend because their families expect them to; some come because a degree, even a weakened one, still carries social status. But Hashmat says many have already given up inside. “I keep going because I do not know what else to do. But every day it gets harder to believe it means something. The Taliban war on the battlefields has stopped, but their war on education continues in silence.”
*Names have been changed to protect their identities.
