Episode #246: Spring University Myanmar
When the coup hit, Thura was a student at the Rangoon Institute of Technology (RIT), which had a distinguished legacy in the annals of Burmese history. “It was, in some sense, the birthplace of the previous coup and the previous revolution, in 1988. It was at that time the military entered the university campus with a SWAT team, and then they opened fire into the student dormitories.”
Thura traces the importance of Burmese student unions in the country’s turbulent history. It starts in the 1920s, when Aung San and U Nu and other young leaders protested British rule, a movement that ultimately culminated in full independence in 1948. Then, following the 1962 military coup, the Student Union building at Rangoon University was bombed in the wake of student protests, killing hundreds. And the 1974 violent protests surrounding the burial of former Secretary General U Thant were also student-led. Finally, in 1990, the military constructed new campuses that were isolated from one another as well as from urban centers in hopes of limiting students’ political influence; they also banned all clubs and unions.
Thura was part of a student group that, during the transition period, sought to re-establish not only a variety of clubs, but also the vaunted Student Union. “We really wanted to be a part of this larger legacy of the Student Unions, resisting unlawful regimes since the previous times. So that was part of it. But there was also strong motivation among us to revitalize the campus,” he explains. Initially operating as an informal collective, it took them 15 months to secure the formal reinstatement of the Student Union on campus. They also championed the allocation of dedicated time and space on campus for extracurricular activities. “By the time when COVID happened, we had one of the most vibrant university campuses across the country! And our students have also been well exposed and well connected through all these activities.”
Upon the Student Union’s official recognition, Thura and his peers leveraged their newfound strength to influence a range of political decisions aligned with the NLD's initiatives. One issue they were particularly engaged in was the proposed reforms being planned as part of the National Education Law; some students were even invited to speak in Parliament. They called for teaching methodologies that were more student-centered, a revised history curriculum that departed from the “Burmanized” themes of the past, and greater collaboration between university courses and community projects.
Thura describes the gradual opening that occurred during the transition period as accomplishing a two-fold purpose. First, it revitalized campus life, which had long been suppressed. And this, in turn, showed students not only a pathway towards creating the kind of university life they wanted, but how they could also be active participants in helping shape the country’s new path forward. But it was not an easy transition. “We had to start everything from scratch, and formulate and just be creative along the way,” he explains. There was a kind of entrepreneurial spirit accompanying their work, partly inspired by American pop culture, particularly the high school TV show, Glee. these gave the students a taste for how to engage in the world—something no one could have predicted would be so impactful after the 2021 coup. “These are the same people that are now actively involved with the Spring Revolution, doing health care or fundraising efforts, or simply just picking up guns and getting trained in the jungle, or working at Ethnic Armed Organizations, or working for the NUG in this resistance movement.”
Like schools and universities the world over, the pandemic closed Burmese institutions and ushered in the era of online learning. This meant that when the coup occurred a year later, students could only connect remotely. Thura believes that if not for COVID, the initial protests would have been far bigger. “The general students’ ideology was abruptly shifted more towards [the] left,” he says, as many were enraged that the election was stolen from them. “With the Civil Disobedience Movement, the students were very visible, and were at the forefront of it, alongside doctors, teachers, and other government workers. It was actually a very big decision for students,” he says, explaining that by joining the CDM, they would effectively be ending their educational aspirations not only in Myanmar, but also any hopes they might have had of transferring abroad. Moreover, a whopping 80% fewer students sat the following year’s matriculation exams. In addition, he notes that Bamar students were beginning to have their consciousness raised about the country’s long history of mistreating ethnic minorities. “It was a time for the students to become more active citizens in the sense that they were later drawn into the armed struggle and subsequent anti-regime activities that followed.”
Like many, Thura didn’t think the resistance movement would last that long, and as the months passed, he began to fear the consequences of such a prolonged period away from his education. Along with this, he reflected on the fact that many professors had joined CDM and so even if students chose to attend school, there would not be many teachers standing in front of classrooms. So he started to pull together the outlines of an idea, even sitting out the Thingyan water festival holiday that year to work on it. These ideas ultimately evolved into Spring University Myanmar (SUM), with the use of “Spring” deliberately evoking the Spring Revolution against the coup. SUM, formed as a virtual university, was founded on May 24, 2021. Somehow word of this spread quickly, and he and his group were soon inundated with an enrollment of nearly 9,000 pupils! To help provide funds to pay teachers, they collected tuition payments of $5-20 per student. As of 2024, SUM has registered over 21,000 students and has over 200 staff!
As the name reflects, the underlying goal of the institution is not just to provide education, but also to align its values with the democratic aspirations of a nation. “When we started SUM in the early days, we made it a priority to always be connected to… the pro-democracy movement.” But Thura and his cohorts, besides reestablishing a learning space, were hoping to democratize and decentralize it by having students “unlearn” the propagandized and heavily Burmanized vision of the country’s history and culture that their prior education had forced on them. They also sought out economic models that could sustain the their new institution going forward.
To transition from college student to university administrator and curriculum designer is no easy task, and Thura soon felt he had gotten in over his head. However, he found that his pre-coup work with the Student Union, and particularly his activity around forming social enterprises, had at least given him enough confidence in his abilities to forge a way forward. So he analyzed all the data, did an inventory of their available resources, discussed the options available… and then chose what he determined was the best approach. “Just pick one and stick to it,” he explains, “and it's also an iterative process… The overall philosophy is generally a living organism or a living document. We keep updating and we keep reflecting on what was urgent on the ground, and we have to adapt to it and respond to it. But of course, without compromising the core foundational principles that we are trying. So at the core of SUM, we're not really trying to put the students back into classes, we are essentially trying to tackle this regime and no surprise, they called us a terrorist organization.”
Indeed, the regime sees SUM as a threat to the legitimacy that it has constantly been striving to establish since the coup, and has publicly targeted it as a terrorist cell—and how many institutions of higher learning have to deal not only with their educational mandate, but the very survival of their students and faculty?! Given these risks, students and teachers alike use pseudonyms and avoid any public mention of an affiliation with the school, and students’ and teachers’ faces are pixilated or blurred in case anyone with nefarious intention logs on. This issue makes something like pronunciation videos in language courses a challenge, because pixilating the face modeling the sounds would be self-defeating. Concerns about security are so pervasive that the methods for receiving donations, tuition payments, and offering professor stipends must be carefully planned as well.
Thura does not mince words about the ultimate goal of his institution: besides serving students’ (and teachers’) needs, they all very much have the underlying objective of helping to topple the regime and its ideology as well. “Our primary goal has always been to help the young people fight their fight,” he explains. “Along the way, we are teaching and providing them with resources and connections and exposure, to each other and to the rest of the world, formulating their responses and campaigns, and helping the CDM professors, because as long as they remain CDM, they are fighting this military regime!” In this way, SUM can be seen as another thread—alongside the armed struggle, the NUG, the CDM, etc.—in the fabric being woven to overcome the junta.
Thura also hopes the groundwork he and others have laid with SUM will feed back into the educational reform discussions that were taking place before the coup. In this way, after the military is defeated, they can renew their efforts to build a new learning model that works for the entire country. “Our education priorities and deliverables need to be aligned with other governance and public administration objectives, as well as the political objectives that those authorities are trying to try to try and achieve. So it's a part of the package.”
SUM has launched various educational initiatives, and is expanding and evolving as it goes. As noted above, it is mainly a virtual learning platform, but more recently, hybrid courses are being offered in liberated areas. Conversely, to facilitate remote learning in conflict zones, they have collaborated with tech providers to create a “SUM box” that provides local Wi-Fi access to educational content without needing internet or mobile connectivity.
They have since expanded their course offerings across multiple disciplines, including engineering, sciences, computer technologies, social sciences, humanities, languages, and law. Moreover, they have developed graduate-level programs in areas such as Human Rights Studies, Governance, Public Administration, and Teaching. These programs, which run for six to nine months, also offer partnerships and MOUs with 11 universities worldwide.
One of SUM’s more standout initiatives are its ethnic language courses. Thura emphasizes that the goal of these courses goes beyond mere language instruction; they aim to foster improved understanding and rapport between the Bamar majority and various ethnic groups, and they have been very successful in this regard. He points out that overcoming years of ethnic biases and propaganda is crucial to this endeavor, and that these courses are part of a larger vision to build a Federal Democratic Union in Myanmar, underpinning political, defense, and strategic efforts towards more inclusive governance. This connects to another goal, to build on local educational initiatives as a means to foster inclusive governance, aligning international resources with the needs and aspirations of local educators and students.
Between the opposing goals of SAC-administered schools on the one side and alternative institutions like SUM on the other lies the vast, monastic school network. Thura begins by outlining their historical context, noting that before British colonization and the advent of modern educational systems, monastic institutions were the main educational providers for nearly a thousand years. In addition to Buddhist monasteries, he mentions other faith-based organizations, like churches and mosques, all of which served a general public that otherwise had limited access to education. This patchwork system was highly effective, achieving an unusually high literacy rate by the early 20th century. Thura emphasizes that even today, monastic schools continue to serve as critical educational resources, especially for vulnerable and displaced communities from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and faiths. He contrasts the operational challenges faced by monastic schools with those faced by institutions like SUM, which do not interface at all with the SAC. Monastic schools, due to their physical infrastructures and locations in SAC-controlled areas, find it difficult to completely disengage without risking severe repercussions, including military attacks. He hopes that SUM might find a way to engage with and support these monastic schools, recognizing their unique role in serving communities that are often overlooked by other educational providers.
Thura concludes by describing how his educational philosophy has shaped this remarkable endeavor. “I've always believed that learning is everywhere, and all we need is to create a nurturing environment, where students are free to express their opinions, and where they could interact with each other freely, with no discrimination and with no sidelining of any agenda.” For now, Thura is simply trying to do all he can to provide the most effective learning experience for students as possible. “I've joined some of these faculty lectures, and damn, they are just so wonderful and full of passion, both in their subject material and their approach to teaching. So beyond that political affiliation, and the affinity that comes with it, what really keeps the students coming back to SUM would be that kind of quality of teaching.”