Al-Bayan Center for Planning and Studies experienced difficulties in holding its third annual conference for 2020, entitled “Higher Education in Iraq: critical approaches and insights”, following the Covid-19 pandemic in Iraq and the world. The spread of the pandemic has revealed the structural weakness of State institutions in various sectors, most notably education. Although higher education in Iraq has made significant quantitative leaps over the past few years, owing to the fact that the number of State and private universities and colleges have risen to 35 and 62, respectively, as well as the fact that the number of students admitted to universities has risen to 190,000 and 31,000 in higher studies, all of this has not exceeded the real problems that have prevented professors and graduates from keeping pace with internationally adopted standards.
The main problem in university education has been the absence of strategic plans that reflect the requirements of the work market, resulting in significant neglect of technical and vocational education. Attention to quantitative levels has also led qualitative standards to neglect, as demonstrated by the lack of focus on improving field and laboratory knowledge and governance infrastructure.
The Iraqi public and private universities remained a duplicate of one university owing to the lack of autonomy in the administrative decision, as well as independence in university admissions, which forced universities and colleges to accept sometimes low levels of educational output for various reasons, including political, street pressure or other unforeseen factors.
Problems in higher education have not ended. In the areas of evaluation, assessment, development standards, quality improvement, and performance, Iraqi universities have not achieved much success, while rigorous scientific journals, scientific discussions in higher studies, and interest in living languages remain far from the required standards.
Al-Bayan Center for Planning and Studies has always focused on institutional problems and has served decision-makers and stakeholders in order to develop a picture of reality and proposals from stakeholders, specialists, and individuals eager to build the Iraqi State.
This book represented the research and studies that researchers sent to our conference, which has not had any luck convening, but we are happy to publish it in this literature, which we consider to be an important book in its field and useful in its recommendations and output. We thank the sincere efforts of the members of the Scientific Committee: Dr. Adnan Yassin Mustafa, Dr. Abd Al-Rahman Najm Al-Mashhadani, and Dr. Ahmed Al-Jaafari, who have selected and evaluated research in the hands of the reader from among 39 different papers and studies sent by specialists from various universities and scientific centers inside and outside Iraq.
