Rezgar Mostafa Mohammed
University of Duhok

Snobar Junaid Rasol
University of Duhok

Abstract

Education systems in the Kurdistan Region have been influenced by a number of international education approaches in the last years. The Bologna process is one prominent example that aimed to certify comparability in the quality of higher education qualifications. How this process promoted the standards of higher education is of interest to researchers and policymakers in the Kurdistan Region. For this purpose, a sample of colleges at the University of Duhok was taken to examine the impact of the Bologna process on developing the qualifications of the academic staff at the university. Teacher Portfolio and Continuous Academic Development are the two criteria that have been used as a proxy for measuring the qualifications and skills of the faculty. The average value of these criteria before implementing the Bologna process in the 2018-2019 academic year were utilized as a benchmark to measure the change in faculty qualifications after three years the program implementation in the 2021-2022 academic year. The Shapiro-Wilk test determined that the variables being examined do not follow a normal distribution. Therefore, the non-parametric Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test was conducted to test the null hypothesis that the distributions of the two dependent groups being considered have the same shape. Based on the results of our empirical study, the Bologna process has impacted the qualifications of the academic staff negatively as the medians of the studied groups for the academic year 2018-2019 were higher than those of the academic year 2021-2022. This study suggests that the policymakers in the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research reassess the Bologna process reform program by taking into account information from a broader sample to investigate the disqualifications of its academic staff that is caused by implementation of this program.