No choice but to remain’: Jordanian students stranded abroad grapple with closed campuses, suspended flights

No choice but to remain’: Jordanian students stranded abroad grapple with closed campuses, suspended flights

AMMAN  “” When universities around the world began closing their campuses in February and March as the novel coronavirus began crossing borders and continents at an alarming rate, students found themselves launched into an unexpected and uncertain remainder of the academic year.

For most students enrolled in university during the pandemic, adjusting to the loss of social life as they had known it and the abrupt switch to online classes was already a blow to morale, but for the roughly 35,000 Jordanians studying abroad, the closure of campuses and dorms signalled a much bigger problem, forcing them to grapple with the questions of where to live, where to go and how, if possible, to get home.

These were the questions going through Jordanian student Rasha Badran's mind when she learned in mid-March that her university in Hungary was closing its doors and evacuating students from dorms as the Hungarian government took strict measures to respond to the coronavirus. 

While Hungarian students were given one week to pack their belongings and move out, international students were given only a day's notice before they were transferred to a different building, she recently told The Jordan Times over the phone.

Badran, a second-year PhD student in Literary