From USA TODAY:
Following Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s pledge last year to fund scholarships for 10,000 Iraqi students to study in the United States, the Iraqi government has dispatched several top officials to Washington as part of an effort to raise interest in their country’s students.
“No country can get out of the suffering and backwardness without the development of higher education,” said Ali al-Adeeb, Iraq’s minister of higher education, who met Tuesday with State Department officials…
Most of the students who have come in more recent years have first needed to enroll in intensive English study programs, but that hasn’t lessened the enthusiasm of more than two dozen universities that have already pledged to enroll Iraqis, al-Khalili said…
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EDITOR: As a junior at Cal Berkeley, the Watchdog was considering a career in economic development and, on the advice of the dean of economics, spent half a year studying at the University Nationale of Mexico. He concluded that it was better to bring a Mexican to the USA for two years of education than educate an American for twenty years and send him to Mexico.
This was the thrust behind the idea of his later sponsoring hundreds of mini-libraries throughout rural Afghanistan schools.
Academic cooperation with Iraq for 10,000 of their students at say $50,000 per student per year will cost a tiny amount compared to sending a hundred thousand American soldiers to Iraq at a cost of a million dollars each a year…and accomplish much more.
Once young people are educated, they have a mind of their own. Ask any parent!
