In the meeting of the Council of Minister, under supervision of Dr. Yusuf Goran, The Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, the instructions to study master and PhD were approved.
In the meeting of May 9th at the meeting room of the ministry in which the ministry’s advisors and the presidents of all universities and general directors were present at the ministry’s bureau, Dr. Yusuf Goran gave a brief about the importance of accepting and the way of accepting students and said that the next meeting will be spent to the accepting centers.
In another part of the meeting, the new instructions for studying master and PhD were discussed about then amended and after that accepted. According to the new instructions of PhD studies, a number of seats of PhDs will be dedicated to the other non-higher education and scientific researches bureaus in which parallel system will be carried out. This will be different from the last year’s instructions and is to encourage the researchers and students away from studying at the abroad non-qualified universities. For the master degree holders of the ministry who want to study PhD at the Kurdistan Universities, they can study full-scholarship.
This gives the chance of study to the ones out of Iraq (the non-Iraqi ID holders) and is called the international applicants. This is true for the ones who are eligible to the parallel system without any qualified competition. The purpose of this step is to encourage and attract the international applicant of PhD researchers to study at Kurdistan Region Universities.
According to another part of the instructions, any students and researchers whose age is bellow eligible can apply to study but parallel system will be taken.
In another part of the meeting, studying master for the year of 2016-2017 at the public universities was brought to the discussion.
In this regard, all the instructions were one-by-one discussed about and were accepted after some amendments. According to the instructions of master, the average of GPA of bachelor degree has to be 60% minimum except the medicine graduates in which average of GPA is not counted.
About the language condition, all the applicants has the right to apply regardless language qualifications to Master but after being accepted he/she has to have a 5 credit at ITLS and 56 of TOEFL-IBT or 495 of TOEFL-PBT or 47 credit of PEARSON ACADEMIC-PTE in the purpose of academic study otherwise will not be allowed to study academic courses till done the English condition then he/she will have the right of master research.
But the ones who have the language qualification will be allowed to study academic courses. For the ones who are not capable to English Language can improve their English into ways; IQ test and participating at Universities institutes of language and have test and pass the one year courses and tests to get a TOEFL-IBT56 in which vis-a-vis the international standards.
The instructions also instruct the ones are English and translation graduates have to have the same criterion of afore-mentioned points.
Regarding the IQ test is 30% and bachelor degree is 70% of GPA to compete. It is obligatory to pass the IQ test 15 out of 30 otherwise will lose the competition and the 15 credit will not receive anything and counted as 0.
The applicant ages have to be not above 45, but to the non-ministry of higher educations, the system will parallel. For the lecturer assistant and employees of the ministry of higher education, the age criterion is not counted.
Regarding the instructions for the year of experience, the applicant has to have a two-year experience at the KRG ministries. The applicant has to have a two-year experience after graduation of bachelor otherwise will lose the chance of study. For the non-KRG employees, less than two years of graduation will lose their competition.
About the applicants of other Iraqi cities’ residents (non-Kurdistan Region Residents/non-Iraq ID holders), the study will be parallel system and has to have the above conditions and the universities have to be accredited by KRG Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. For the private universities graduates have the same chance of study based on parallel system following the above conditions.
The applicant of master has to have the same specialization of bachelor, but for the departments which are close and relevant to each other, there will be a committee to evaluate the similarities of the specialization departments.
The instruction which was focused on was non-ministry of higher education’s seats will be parallel system and the other seats to the polytechnic and new universities will be dedicated. The new-established universities and polytechnic applicants are competing on the seats in which are available for more than one applicant.
Also, the second and third round candidates of HCDP, the ones whom application processes have not done, can apply. If they win the competition, their names will be deleted from HCDP candidates, but if they are not accepted, their chance to HCDP will be continued.
In another part of the meeting, the financial crisis of Hayat University was brought to the point of consideration. In doing this, Dr. Jamal Kamal, the ministry’s private universities supervisor had a brief about the Hayat Technological University problems. In this context and after discussion of the aspects of the problems, according to the article of 1/26 of the law of number 3 regarding the private universities for 2013, the ministry council decided to give the university a 3-month of waiting till 10/08/2016 to solve its financial problems; otherwise, back to the above-mentioned problem, the university will be isolated from its founder and the board member of the university in coordination with the ministry will run the university up to the time that a substitution is found.