The splitting of the city is ruled through restrictive transit controls between the halves and the nationalistic preponderance of the once common mother tongue. The ones suffering most from this are the students on the eastern side, whose freedom of movement is strongly impedimented. A matriculation and studies on the Croat western side is practicably impossible for them. The situation of the now two universities are very different. The western side has access to renovated buildings, while the Muslims' part of the city lacks a proper infrastructure.
Lectures are held in provisional theatres, neither equipment nor books are available.
With three to seven professors per faculty the tuition is also rather understaffed. On the western side the understaffing was compensated by guest lectures from professors from Croatia but even with Croatian help there are severe shortcomings of academic equipment. After three years of war Tuzla is still a generally multinational and multi-confessional city. Around 110.000 inhabitants and 60.000 refugees live in the major industrial town in north-eastern Bosnia. The university, although little damaged, suffers from the exodus of its teaching staff, the missing academic materials and the isolation from technological advances achieved elsewhere.