Spending on Education to Achieve Sustainable Development: Between Reality and Ambition

Abstract

        Universities have a unique position in fulfilling the objectives of sustainable development since they represent the essential educational institutions that are responsible for producing and spreading scientific, technological and social knowledge. This might be done via educational or research programs, let alone their leading role in creating harmony among the whole concerned parties from the Government, business institutions and society. All these parties work together in order to fulfil the objectives of sustainable development. Thus, expending on education for providing the required resources and fulfil these objectives is regarded as an essential requirement. Advanced countries cared to provide the educate resources of universities to improve their performance and fulfil their objectives. But in developing countries, on the other hand, such as Iraq, the great financial resources had not been made use of in order to improve education via increasing the expenditures on investment in education. Reviewing the financial allocations to the education sector in the state budget from 2004 to 2021 may reveal that there was a noticeable decrease in these allocations to the education sector, though it is considered as one of the vital sectors that fulfil sustainable development. Not only did this decrease negatively reflect on the education sector, but also all the other sectors due to its being an influential resource for providing the elements of scientific competencies and technical skills of these sectors. As a result, this was negatively reflected on the level of sustainable development in Iraq which was given the rank (121) in the international classification related to the level of development.

The present research aims at verifying the effectiveness of the expending on the higher education in Iraq for the period 2004-2021 and its impact on fulfilling sustainable development via adopting the descriptive analytical approach.

Among the most important results obtained is the rarity or lack of allocations allocated to the Education sector in the general budget as compared with the role and importance of this sector. This, of course, was negatively reflected on the role of Education sector in fulfilling sustainable development in Iraq.