The Joint Meeting of the Ministers of Higher Education of Baghdad and Erbil
On November 5th, 2016, their excellences Dr. Razak Issa, the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research of Iraq, and Dr. Yousuf Goran, the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research of Kurdistan held a joint meeting in the University of Sulaymani with the Presidents of universities and educational leaders. The meeting’s goal was to share the news about the joint committees established by their excellences to cooperate in the areas of higher education.
Dr. Salah Aziz attended the meeting and congratulated their excellences for starting a new era of cooperation. He stated that in 2007, there was a plan for developing higher education in Iraq (including Kurdistan) and received grants and funds from Qatar, USA and Europe. But unfortunately, politicians made it difficult to benefit from the external assistances. After almost 10 years, meeting of both ministers considered an important step.
Dr. Salah mentioned that the reform of the higher education in Iraq started 10 years ago with two concepts: Academic Freedom and Quality of Higher Education. Mechanisms for both concepts have been developed and tried by many countries, therefore, localizing vs. internationalization of Higher education should be the goal. Their excellences emphasized on the importance of the local criteria to measure quality of the higher education with benefiting from the International experience.
