Dr. Alaa Abdel-Hassan Attia: Former Head of the Scientific Supervision and Evaluation
Dr. Ahmad Kanaan Al-Jaafari: Specialist in educational administration and policies
Globalization is a global system based on the cyber brain and the information revolution. Which in turn is based on unlimited technical creativity without any consideration of the world’s systems, values, cultures, and geographical and political boundaries. Thus, it is considered the cornerstone of the new economic system. Globalization will bring new threats, especially to developing countries such as Iraq. Our lives and their facilities will be subject to global standards sooner or later.
From this standpoint, and since universities represent the cornerstone of openness and scientific progress, we must think carefully about whether our universities can compete with others in their conformity with international standards in a time of globalization? Do our programs achieve global standards? These are some of the concerns that we should be concerned about and address and turn globalization’s dangers into possible opportunities to succeed.
University leadership should first understand what a “global university” means. A global university is a university that has a set of characteristics and features and carries out activities that transfer it from a national or local level to a global level. The scientific history of the university should accompany this transformation. It is worth noting that fewer than 600 universities can be called leading international universities worldwide. Half of these universities belong to the Association of American Universities. This association includes a group of private universities such as Yale, Harvard, the University of Southern California, the University of Chicago, and public universities such as the University of Michigan and the University of California at Berkeley. The Association of American Universities’ achievements can be summarized as having obtained 4,407 patents in a year. Their researchers composed 56,000 books in 2016 and published 2.3 million research papers between 2011 and 2016.
An interesting thing is evident in these global universities: the importance of innovation and the value of partnership with institutions and companies. For example, Seoul National University in South Korea topped the list of universities participating in the development of Samsung products with 1204 joint work. At the same time, the Imperial College of London ranked first in the partnerships with the Glasco-Smith Pharmaceuticals Company, with 459 innovative work.
