Thursday, May 26, 2005
Iraqi higher education in tatters
Indo-Asian News Service
London, May 26, 2005
Burnt, looted or destroyed - that has been the fate of 84 per cent of Iraq's higher education institutions since the 2003 war, according to a report by United Nations University (UNU).
The report by the UN think tank calls on the global community to help Iraq set up a National Commission for Higher Education to restore its academic institutions and rebuild its educational capacity, reports science portal SciDev.
"The devastation of the Iraqi system of higher education has been overlooked amid other cataclysmic war results, but represents an important consequence of the conflicts, economic sanctions and ongoing turmoil in Iraq," says the report's author Jairam Reddy, director of the UNU International Leadership Institute in Amman, Jordan.
"Repairing Iraq's higher education system is in many ways a prerequisite to the long-term repair of the country as a whole."
Reddy's report, released earlier this month, says that more than 2,000 laboratories in Iraq need equipping. The country's universities and other institutions too need about 30,000 computers.
Libraries are in urgent need of restocking with new books and journals in both Arabic and English, as well as access to electronic journals.
The report also underlines the need for human resources. Between 30 and 40 percent of Iraq's most highly trained educators are thought to have emigrated since 1990, says Reddy.
At least 48 academics have been assassinated since the war - some apparently because they cooperated with the US, others seemingly silenced before they could discuss Saddam Hussein's former weapons research.
Many more scientists continue to face threats and intimidation, or have been forced out of their jobs. Several have fled the country.
In the past, Iraqi scientists and engineers were productive and respected members of the global academic community. In the 20 years before the war, Iraq created a new university every 17 months.
The larger universities like Basra, Baghdad and Mosul had between five and eight specialised research centres. Other research institutions included the Polymer Research Centre, the Date Palm Research Centre and the Marine Research Centre.
But after the 1991 Gulf War and the imposition of sanctions by the UN, research and scientific training fell into decline.
"The teaching overload of academic staff was a serious obstacle to the development of high quality research," says Reddy's report. There was also limited international cooperation in research as Iraq's research centres were isolated from the international academic community.
The final blow came with the 2003 war and the looting and destruction that followed.
Reddy says Iraq needs a commission on higher education similar to that set up in his native South Africa after the end of apartheid to help undertake a full review and transformation of the nation's higher education system.
© HT Media Ltd. 2005.