The role of systematic evaluation systems in educational planning to improve the quality of higher education in a war zone : a case study of Lebanese French university (LFU)‎

Abstract EN

Delivering a high-quality education has always been a mammoth challenge in war-torn countries, and Iraq is no exception.

The country has suffered through more than a decade of war and sectarian violence.

Although the Kurdistan region of Iraq is an autonomous region of the country since 1992, the region has nonetheless been tormented by double sanctions and very uniquely faced a ‘Catch22’ problem.

In these settings, developing a university and offering quality instruction is a matter of experimentation.

Lebanese French University (LFU) is a growing university in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq which strives to introduce systematic evaluation systems to secure quality in education.

This analysis intends to measure the extent to which LFU improved its performance on multi-dimensional criteria viz.

faculty member academic engagements, student participation in academic and cultural activities, and administration co-operation and efficiency.

The study randomly selected 221 samples from LFU and used quantitative techniques to analyse the data.

Results show that LFU fulfilled the key criteria of quality assurance.

The improvements are more visible since 2017, as the university maintained the set of academic activities, and additionally, the university has focused on improving the quality of curriculum, and planned several engagements with the industries and the chambers.

However, during the research, we found that the university needs a split stratagem to improve infrastructure quality and provide more facilities for academic activities.