Males usually had to serve in the military before they could enter the university. These requirements, along with the country’s overall poverty, constrained university enrollment. Sudan’s first university, the University of Khartoum, opened in 1902. It began as Gordon Memorial College, a secondary school, and then became affiliated with the University of London in 1937, offering bachelor’s degrees. In 1956, at independence, it became a fully independent degree-granting institution. The University of Khartoum, with four campuses, remained the country’s flagship university, but even it was not immune to the pressures of politics and war. About 70 faculty who opposed al-Bashir’s Islamist reforms were dismissed in the early 1990s, and in January 1997, the university closed temporarily to allow students to join the armed forces. Most observers agreed that by the early 2000s, this once-elite institution in Africa had become a mere shadow of its former self. Successive purges of the faculty following the 1964, 1969, and 1989 “revolutions” had deprived the campus of some of its best talent. Lowered standards in secondary schools as a result of the “socialist” experiment in the 1970s, combined with the disappearance of English as the language of instruction in secondary and university systems after 1990, continued to reduce the quality of incoming students. These developments at the nation’s premier university were replicated throughout the higher education establishment. Higher education was primarily the domain of Northern Sudanese after independence, particularly those living in the capital region. In the mid-1970s, there were four universities, 11 colleges, and 23 institutes in Sudan. The universities were in the capital area, and all institutions of higher learning were in the North. Colleges in Sudan were specialized degree-granting entities; institutes granted diplomas and certificates for periods of study shorter than those commonly demanded at universities and colleges. These postsecondary institutions and universities had provided Sudan with a substantial number of well-educated persons in some fields but left it short of technical personnel and specialists in sciences relevant to the country’s largely rural character. By 1980 two new universities had opened, one at Wad Madani (University of Gezira) and the other in Juba. By 1990 some institutes had been upgraded to colleges, and many had become part of an autonomous body called the Khartoum Institute of Technical Colleges (also referred to as Khartoum Polytechnic). Some of its affiliates were outside the capital area, for example, the College of Mechanical Engineering at