Massive pay rise to lure university teachers to stay

 

By Ali al-Mawsawi

 

Azzaman, July 7, 2005

 

With the start of the new academic year in September Iraq’s 16,500 university teachers will see their salaries doubled.

 

The pay raise, the largest ordered by the government in the past two years, is expected to cost the treasury up to 10 billion dinars a month. (On dollar is worth 1,450 dinars)

 

Initially, the government was reluctant to approve the raise for economic reasons but it had to back down following warnings from the Ministry of Higher Education that Iraqi professors were leaving in droves.

 

The salary raise is good news for the university faculty whose members had to make ends meet with an average of 15,000 dinars a month (less than 10 dollars) under the former leader Saddam Hussein.

 

The new raise will see salaries of faculty with the title of professor rising up to $1,000.

 

It brings salaries at Iraqi universities close to those in neighboring Jordan, so far a magnet for the country’s brain drain.

 

Iraq has the highest percentage of people with higher degrees in the Middle East.

 

According to official statistics the proportion of people with Ph.D.s in Iraq is higher even than in advanced countries.

 

Iraqi universities run their own post-graduate programs and 390 doctoral candidates are expected to join the University of Baghdad alone this year.

 

There are 12 universities in the country running their own Ph.D. studies.

 

But the universities, like many other institutions, were victims of former leader Saddam Hussein’s wars and the current violence that has gripped the country since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

 

Doctors, teachers and businessmen have been leaving in Iraq in the past two years in unprecedented waves because they feel unsafe.

 

No exact figures are available but the government hopes the pay raise will at least stem the brain drain that has afflicted the universities.

 

But the authorities realize that the problem is not confined to the campus.

 

Doctors are leaving, too, and at rates with devastating consequences for some hospitals and clinics.

 

The pay raise does not cover doctors even if they had a higher degree that would entitle them to teach university students.