Five years after the military coup, Myanmar’s higher education continues to be entangled in political upheaval, where it is marked by frequent university closures, militarisation, heightened surveillance and restrictions on academic freedom (Rahmat et al., 2026). Despite the ongoing risk of arrest and persecution, many university students remain involved in the anti-coup movement, from boycotting the state-controlled public universities to engaging in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDA) to joining pro-democracy forces (Waa, 2022). Meanwhile, the military junta, confronted with such defiance as well as the growing defeats against the ethnic insurgents and pro-democracy forces (Simpson, 2024), has implemented mandatory military service, forcibly conscripting young men and women nationwide. These realities impose several challenges on students’ higher education pursuits. Yet, the weight of these challenges is uneven. Students experiencing intersecting vulnerabilities, such as ethnic minorities, socio-economic disadvantage, conflict exposure and/or anti-coup political affliction, are often at a heightened risk of exclusion from higher education.

Against this backdrop, this paper asks: How do students, particularly those from marginalised and politically active backgrounds, from Myanmar navigate exclusion to pursue and re-imagine higher education amid political upheaval? Instead of relegating political instability to the background, this paper explores how it plays an instrumental role in determining students’ educational trajectories, choices, and opportunities. It also focuses not only on higher education access, but on what conditions are needed for meaningful participation to materialise in times of crisis. 

Theoretically, the paper draws on Hill Collins’s (2019) concept of intersectionality, approaching it as a lens that informs interpretation rather than prescribes analysis. Here, intersectionality not only looks at how multiple social identities such as race, gender and ethnicity overlap to exacerbate social inequalities but foregrounds how power functions through interlocking systems of oppression to penalise some individuals while privileging others. In Myanmar, Hill Collins’s concept of intersectionality problematises a homogenous view of exclusion to better understand how the military coup and its aftermath in Myanmar converge with existing inequalities along the lines of gender, ethnicity, and digital divide, among others, to create disparities in higher education opportunities for students. Of particular importance is how her theoretical lens sheds light on exclusion within access. Being able to access non-state alternative higher education programmes does not guarantee meaningful participation for all students because of the convergence of different structural conditions, such as conflict exposure, digital connectivity, and forced displacement.

To understand how these dynamics materialise on the ground, the paper uses two complementary qualitative research methods. First, the open-ended online survey explores the rationales, experiences, and challenges of the wider student population across state-controlled public universities, private institutions and non-state alternative higher education pathways. The survey provides a contextual backdrop to understand whether political concerns and meanings surfaced across the general student body. Insights from the survey then inform the follow-up semi-structured interviews to unpack how students narrate their educational journeys, political engagement, and their plans amid ongoing conflict.

Insights from this paper, albeit not framed as a comparative account, resonate beyond Myanmar, contributing to international debates on higher education under conditions of oppression, geopolitical tensions, conflict, and authoritarian governance. Such conditions can be witnessed across several countries, including parts of Europe, raising questions about access, inclusion, institutional fragility, and student agency in times of crisis.

The paper employed a two-phase qualitative research design. The first phase involved an open-ended online survey, which was distributed to students across different higher education pathways. The survey, offered in both Burmese and English, was composed of a demographic section and four open-ended components to explore the rationales, experiences, aspirations, and challenges of the wider student body. Doing research in a context-affected necessitates careful consideration of the risks to both my participants’ safety and my own as a researcher from Myanmar. Since the 2021 military coup, the junta has relied on the 505(A) penal code to criminalise anyone who expresses political opinions critical of the military junta (Human Rights Watch, 2021). Yet disentangling students' higher education experiences from the broader political landscape would undermine, and even distort, their living realities. Hence, the survey questions did not feature direct political topics but were framed in a way that gave students the opportunity to talk about them. To reach students pursuing different higher education routes in a politically repressive context, snowballing sampling was used (Bryman, 2012), yielding a total of 270 responses. Insights from the survey then became a contextual backdrop for more in-depth inquiry through online semi-structured interviews. For this second phase, I used purposive sampling (Braun & Clarke, 2013), where I reached out to trusted networks to recruit 20 participants who are from marginalised and politically active backgrounds, either pursuing private or alternative non-state higher education pathways. Such a recruitment strategy is essential to engage with politically sensitive experiences while prioritising the safety of everyone involved. I had an approximately one-hour semi-structured interview with each participant, where we delved into three key topics: (i) their backgrounds and educational journeys before the 2021 military coup; (ii) their ongoing struggles and experiences of pursuing higher education; (iii) their aspirations and plans. Both survey and interview data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021), which outlined six phases: (i) Familiarisation with the data, (ii) Coding, (iii) Generating initial themes, (iv) Reviewing themes, (v) Defining and naming themes, and (vi) Writing up. Every phase, as suggested by Bruan and Clarke (2021), was not followed in a rigid manner. Instead, themes were consciously coded, interpreted, and constructed with respect to the wider socio-political landscape. Throughout the process, I remained reflexive about my positionality and theoretical underpinning.

The survey findings underscore the challenges emerging from the experiences of the wider student body: financial hardship, job insecurity, concerns about personal safety, and future uncertainty. Among those attending non-state higher education pathways, these challenges were further compounded by internet issues, fear of getting arrested, and forced displacement. Of particular interest is how several political remarks were observed from students’ accounts, including those from state-controlled universities, despite the survey not probing direct political questions. Interview findings echo these survey accounts but offer a deeper insight into how marginalised and politically active students navigate exclusion to pursue higher education amid conflict, forced displacement and military surveillance. Students shared pursuing education while always on the move to evade arrest, continuing studies online while staying hidden following the arrest warrants, as well as juggling academic workload alongside the ongoing resistance movement. Those attending private institutions shared their financial concerns and debts, which coincided with fears of getting arrested and persecuted because of their political involvement. In the stories they reflected on, higher education opportunities were noted as fragile and limited. Noteworthy is to point out how exclusion resides within access. With the emergence of non-state alternative higher education pathways, students gain more access to higher education. Yet, those who benefit most often come from relatively privileged positions. Meaningful participation of those at the periphery remains constrained by a combination of digital divides, conflict exposure and safety concerns, underscoring structural intersectionality. Across the survey and interview findings, higher education was described not only as a space to obtain credentials but, for many, as an act of survival and resistance. Through these findings, the paper contributes to an international dialogue on student agency and higher education in times of crisis. It also offers methodological and ethical insights for conducting research in fragile and conflict-affected settings.

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