2011- Synopsis from a meeting held by the Iraqi Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, 2011

Edited by r Ismail K Jalili
اجتماع لندن 2011 ملاحظات من تحرير- د. اسماعيل الجليلي

MoHESR intend to review the whole system according to the needs of Iraq; this includes the budget for HE which is ID 90 Billion by demarcating the budget for the HE and separating it from the total budget and increasing the budget for the latter by an additional ID 700 Billions. A deficit of ID 30 Bn exists.

Facts and Figures: -
- 245,000 student will finish the Iraqi Baccalaureate this year with >180,000 seeking higher education thus creating a huge pressure on universities. -
- 60% of the degrees are in humanities (rather than sciences), thus hyper inflating the bureaucracy and creating a wide gap between the salaries of technocrats and those with degrees in humanities with a surplus of 2500 teaching posts in humanities
- Productive sectors: private sector is dead; technical infrastructure is substandard. -

General Principles -
- Encouragement of both private and foreign sectors to contribute. -
- Any university recognised by the UN will have the opportunity to open branches in Iraq. They will be able to employ Iraqis from inside Iraq and abroad. -
- The private education sector has not been permitted to grant postgraduate degrees. There is already over 70 applications from some of the neighbouring countries. -
- The plan for 2014 is to establish 8 specialist universities (medical, engineering, oil) to be increased to 15 by 2020. -

Points Raised by delegates: -
Complicated bureaucracy facing the Iraqi expertise in diaspora such as Iraqi Residency Permit, Ration card, etc (at a time some have been abroad for several decades). -
Bureaucracy faced by Iraq on scholarships in the UK. -
Incompetence and corruption in the civil service. -
Poor remuneration of Iraqis on scholarship. -