Syria crisis: should universities help?

Vice-chancellor Nick Petford writes from the Kurdistan camp where refugees have lost an education as well as their homes As dusk approaches the temperature fall is dramatic. The small groups of residents still outside turn their backs on the cold and return home. Except of course they don't. Home is not here, among the muddy UNHCR-branded tents and water trucks but somewhere all together more hostile. There are now more than 250,000 Syrian refugees in the Kurdistan region of Northern Iraq, itself no stranger to suffering. Remember Saddam Hussein's chemical warfare against the inhabitants of Halajba? They were Kurds, the same people now offering sanctuary to their desperate neighbours.

I am here to see for myself how my university can help. We have some experience already. Staff from the education department have begun work with UK partners and a Kurdish charity to establish a school in the Domiz refugee camp on the border with Syria. The team sent out resources and trained teachers as part of an ongoing project. A welcome effort but because of its small scale – confined to a single camp – it barely scratches the surface.

The Kawergosk camp where I am has some 2,000 families making up a population of more than 14,000. Most have arrived in the past six months and the facilities are at breaking point. So far no UK charity has sent aid. Walking round with the camp manager we are invited by a family into their tent, partly out of curiosity, but also I expect boredom.

In the fading afternoon light, our muddy shoes left outside, Hussein Issa, a construction worker, tells his story. Their house destroyed as the fighting intensified, the family fled east. His six children all under 10, listen politely in cramped, slightly damp quarters as their parents lay bare the drama that brought them to this place. Struggling to take it in, I blurt out a lame question about his expectations for the future. He stares at me then quietly mutters something about a better life for his children. Suddenly the sense of intrusion is overwhelming. There is nothing more to say.

A group of teenage boys, some in Real Madrid and Barcelona tops, catch my eye in the gloom outside. One wearing a Chelsea shirt comes over. Against a backdrop of gas flares from the sprawling Kar refinery nearby, Ahmed tells me how he completed his first year at a French-run university in Syria before the fighting forced him out. His twin dream is to complete his degree in engineering, and for Jose Mourinho's team to win the Champions League. We both know which is more likely in the near term.

The short drive back past the high rise hotels, pizza restaurants and furniture stores to downtown Erbil is spent in reflection. What should UK universities do to help improve the situation above the support provided by groups like CARA (Council for Assisting Refugee Academics)? What is their wider responsibility, if anything? Should it all just be left to UNICEF? There are no easy answers.

Our plan at Northampton is to develop more widely the pop-up school model through sponsorship and crowdfunding activities jointly with the students' union. This links to our social entrepreneurship agenda and AshokaU Changemaker values. Could this, or similar interventions at grass roots level, be scaled up through a coalition of the willing? Quite easily. And the results would be there for all to see. Is it likely to happen? Welcome back to the awkwardness of Mr Issa's family tent.