Science scholarships for post-graduate students

Iraq's Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research introduced a scholarship programme on 1 December for students hoping to obtain Master’s degrees and doctorates abroad. "This is a good opportunity for graduate students to study abroad for Master’s degrees and PhDs at the same time," the General Director of Scholarships at the ministry, Sabah al-Mussawy said. Approximately one thousand students will be involved in the programme. "The ministry has a grant of US $100 million dollars to support the programme. Fifty percent is going to be spent in 2005 and 50 percent next year," said al-Mussawy. Government scholarships for study outside Iraq were discontinued in the early 1980s due to a lack of funding. Once economic sanctions were imposed by the United Nations Security Council after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the country’s development slowed, greatly affecting scientific universities and institutes. "I returned from England in 1989 after I got a Master’s degree in engineering. After that, no one had the chance to study overseas, so I completed my PhD degree here in Baghdad University," Hassan Hamed, a lecturer at Baghdad University. "Scholarships are very important for higher education because of their positive role in Iraqi development and progress,” said another lecturer in al-Nahrrain University. “I do encourage this programme.” Al-Mussawy said that Iraq needed around 15 thousand higher degrees from specialists: 25 percent in medicine, 25 percent in engineering, 20 percent in science, 20 percent in the social sciences and 10 percent in agriculture and veterinary medicine. Students who are likely to benefit from the programme welcomed the move, expressing hope that the ministry would increase the numbers of students and specialists involved. "I wish the ministry would extend the number of the students and the criteria, because many students were excluded from their right to study abroad during the Saddam era," said Tha'ar Abd al-Jalil, a graduate student in computer science. Criteria for acceptance into the scholarship programme are tough: seventy percent pass rate for a bachelors and Master's degree. Two years’ study is allotted for a PhD and four for a Master’s and PhD together. Students are expected to pay back the full cost of their studies if they do not return to Iraq. Ministry officials told IRIN that all the Iraqi provinces would be involved in the programme, with the numbers of universities and institutes in each, the numbers of students and the ratio of lecturers to students being taken into account in the selection process. "The list of applicant students for the scholarship will be announced in March 2006 and they might join the universities by the middle of next year," al-Mussawy. Places nominated for study are the United Kingdom, the US, Canada, Australia, Germany and France, as well as Europeans universities in various Arab countries.