Zain Youssef
Photography by Mahmoud Raouf
Private education also has a space at the Iraq International Book Fair in a seminar held under the title “Grievances, difficulties and achievements of private education in Iraq”, in which Dr. Hussein Ali, Director of Private University Education at the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, and Dr. Jaafar Al-Musawi, Dean of the Faculty of Heritage at the National University, participated and was moderated by the writer Hussein Rashid.
At the beginning of the session, Dr. Hussein Ali talked about the work of the Directorate of Private University Education with private universities, saying, «We as a private education department in the Ministry of Higher Education supervise and follow up on private colleges, which have become approximately 70 private colleges and universities, and as everyone knows that private colleges are synonymous with public universities, to rule the outputs of the Ministry of Education and the number increasing annually due to population growth and this is normal, and there has become a development in the field of private education and there are more than one college whose level has become large and competed Public universities, and this is really a joyful thing, because it is important for us as a ministry to maintain scientific sobriety in order for our private universities to rise and compete with public universities locally and also at the global level,” he said.
“In general, as curricula, infrastructure and professors, there is no difference from public universities, because the curricula that are approved in private colleges are the same as those found in public universities, and on the other hand, most of the professors, whether retired or unretired, are currently in private universities,” he added.
Regarding relieving pressure on public universities through private universities and through the presence of teaching staff who previously worked in public universities, Jaafar Al-Mousawi said that it is «a great opportunity to attract large numbers and many of our distinguished professors who were representing the summit of university and government education, and we are happy to be the summary of the existing summits in public university education to invest in private university education, so we find that the competencies available and found in private colleges are in certain proportions of Retirees, most of whom hold the titles of professor or assistant professor in this field.”
He pointed out that «private colleges have their fingerprint and existence and have their effectiveness and impact and the presence of the Department of Private Education, are for monitoring as well as the supervision and sobriety device».
And about the need for such a large number of private universities and how to follow up and monitor them, Dr. Hussein Ali said that «the number is in fact already not small, but as a result it is approved according to the law and the last law issued 25 of 2016, as it organized a lot of things for private colleges, in general there are controls, standards and determinants in order to develop private colleges, including infrastructure, professors and curricula, secondly, there has become competition between private colleges, and I consider that this is healthy because many of the Colleges are developing at the moment.”
Regarding the future perspective for private universities in order to develop education in the country, Dr. Jaafar Al-Musawi said, “As for the College of Heritage, it is known to everyone that it is one of the oldest and most prestigious private colleges, if we are talking, for example, about the University of Baghdad for government education, the College of Heritage in parallel with the University of Baghdad in terms of tradition for private education and the College of Heritage for its great heritage bore this responsibility, so it was distinguished in everything, for example, we now find laboratories distinguished and one of the best international origins, In addition, when you enter the Faculty of Heritage, you find that it is like a five-star hotel in everything and without exaggeration,” he said.
“There is an endeavor to attract private colleges for distinguished scientific titles and their attempts to twinning with many colleges, whether local public universities, regional universities or at the international level,” he added.