Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/62913
However, Saddam Hussein's rule and the Iraq War have taken their toll. Iraq in the worst of times experienced assassinations of leading academics and a brain drain, leaving its universities with an insufficient number of academi- cally qualified professors, especially those with educational, research, and teaching experience outside of Iraq. This shortage of quali- fied teaching staff has been com- pounded by an enormous demand for higher education. A top prior- ity for Iraqi business schools is to rebuild their universities and teaching staffs and again engage with the global higher education community—and for that, they will need to build strong partnerships with schools in the West. My Biggest Challenge My journey to Iraq started in March 2010, when I received a phone call from AECOM International Devel- opment, a Virginia-based subsidiary of AECOM Technology Services, headquartered in Los Angeles, Cali- fornia. The company's representa- tive asked if I would consider par- ticipating in a project to strengthen Iraq's financial and private banking system. The assignment would be part of a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Develop- ment (USAID). The project's primary goal is to support the develop- ment of Iraq's private banks and enhance financial intermediation. This would also include, for me, working directly with Iraq's Minis- try of Higher Education and Iraqi universities to help them strengthen their curricula, develop their faculty, and support the country's business growth, private banking sector, and financial education institutions. 38 May/June 2012 BizEd Because I knew little about pri- vate banking, I initially declined their invitation but due to the company's persistence, I allowed them to submit my qualifications as part of their technical proposal to USAID. I forgot about the proj- ect until I received an email in July 2010 congratulating "us" on win- ning the project and advising me that I was expected in Baghdad in ten days. While I enjoy international development work and have spent some 30 years involved with the private sector, governments, and higher education institutions throughout Asia and the Middle East, I was looking forward to the upcoming academic year teaching in the School of Business at George Washington University in Washing- ton, D.C. However, since a large part of GW's mission is its commit- ment to global education, I decided to discuss this opportunity with our new dean, Doug Guthrie. With his encouragement, and that of my department chair, I found myself in Baghdad a few weeks later to take on one of the biggest challenges of my academic career. Higher Education in Iraq Once in Baghdad, I was able to recruit a small but very talented team and together we began to educate ourselves about Iraq's uni- versities. Finding information on the structure and system of public and private universities in Iraq was our initial challenge. Even more difficult was the task of having everything translated from Arabic to English. Data on enrollment, gender dis- tribution, and numbers of students studying in certain disciplines— information routinely available for universities in the West—was lack- ing or incomplete. Since there has been a proliferation of private uni- versities during the past few years, identifying officially authorized universities and the programs they offer was also a challenge; how- ever, with help from the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MOHE) we were able to get a better picture of the Iraqi higher education environment. Iraq includes the Kurdistan Region in Northern Iraq, as well as Central and Southern Iraq. The Kurdistan Region is semi-autono- mous, so it follows a structure of An entrance to the University of Baghdad's College of Administration and Economics.