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Kurdistan: Students Abuse University
Admissions Scheme
9.12.2006
By Wrya Hama Tahir in Koya (ICR No. 205, 9-Dec-06)
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December 9,
2006 - KOYA, Kurdistan Region (Iraq)
Well-connected students exploit programme
designed to get former peshmerga into higher
education.
The University of Koya in the Iraqi president's
hometown is facing a struggle to maintain academic
standards as more than half of the students studying
there were accepted without the required grades.
When the Kurdish government introduced a new
academic system in the region between the late
Nineties and early 2000, it granted ex-peshmerga
what’s known as “Special Acceptance”, meaning they
could go to university without meeting the official
entrance requirements.
The Kurdish fighters had lost out on an education
during their struggle with the Ba’ath regime, but
after the autonomous Kurdish region was established
in 1991 they settled back into civilian life.
However, many students who’ve entered the university
in eastern Iraqi Kurdistan through the positive
discrimination programme were still children at the
time of the Kurdish uprising, and managed to get
places because they were members of the ruling
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, PUK, or had
influential contacts in the party.
The PUK ruled the eastern part of Iraqi Kurdistan
and the Kurdistan Democratic Party, KDP, held sway
in the west for around a decade before the two
administrations were unified last year.
A 21-year old student who was just six during the
1991 struggle against the Saddam regime admitted
that he got into Koya university with the help of a
relative who is a PUK official. “I know it is
illegal but I wanted to study at the university," he
said. He refused to give his name in case he got
expelled.
Most of the special acceptances were put forward by
affiliates of the PUK. University officials say
around 2,600 of the 3,500 students received such
preferential treatment.
Until 1991, there was only one higher education
institute in the region, the University of Salahadin
in Erbil. Since then, the Kurdish government has
re-established the University of Sulaimaniyah that
had been shut down by the central government and
later founded the University of Dohuk and, most
recently in the late 1990s, the University of Koya.
Koya, the hometown of Iraqi president Jalal Talabani,
has recently benefited from government investment,
the university receiving a 259 million US dollar
overhaul last year.
Although university officials at Koya say they’ve
ceased the special acceptance provision, they admit
they are currently facing academic challenges
because many of the students that came through the
scheme cannot keep up with the workload.
Professor Khidr Massoum, president of the
university, accused former colleagues of having been
too close to parities and politicians. “Special
acceptance is part of corruption,” he said.
Rebwar Sabir, head of Students Federation, an
umbrella organisation for 13 students associations,
said it had been a “serious mistake” and suggests
that the peshmerga who’d lost out on education
during the years of conflict should have been
compensated in other ways.
Ordinary students who’ve worked hard to get a place
at university have been strongly critical of special
acceptance. History senior Blind Abdullad said the
provision had made them feel “discouraged and tired
of studying”.
There has been much criticism of the student wing of
the PUK, the Kurdistan Students Association, for
supporting the programme.
Aram Sami, a spokesman for the association, accepts
that the practice was wrong and probably caused
problems at the university, but insists that group
“didn’t put pressure on the university”.
The faculties with the highest proportion of the
special acceptances have been the departments of
history, geography and psychology and the law
school.
The abuse of the preferential admissions programme
by well-connected youngsters who never fought as
peshmerga has clearly undermined its reputation, and
forced the few students who actually battled the
regime onto the defensive.
"This is our right, we are allowed to study because
of our struggle," insisted Omar Mohammad, 45, a
psychology student.
But regular students also complain about favouritism
that goes beyond being admitted without proper
grades. Special acceptances, they claim, regularly
miss class and pass exams without seemingly putting
in any work.
History student Abdulrahim became suspicious after a
colleague who’d won a place on the peshmerga
programme failed nine exams but then passed all of
them at the second attempt. “He passed and I still
have to study,” he said.
University president Massoum believes that it is too
late to do anything about the special acceptances
now. “[Teaching staff] have to cope with them and
wait until they all graduate,” he said. "We have
many who are seniors. If we kick them out now, it
will only cause new problems."
Wrya Hama Tahir is an IWPR contributor in
Sulaimaniyah.
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