Building a better business school for Baghdad

10 September 2024

Christine M van den Toorn, Founder &, Director of Baghdad Business School, tells its story, that despite limited local resources and a multitude of operational challenges, it has built a future in line with international patterns, presenting opportunities for future growth.  At the start the goal was to build an MBA, four years later it couldn‘t be further from our plans.

Five years ago, I left my decade-long tenure at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani, (AUIS) on a mission to establish what had been percolating in my head for several years - an idea called “Baghdad Business School.” From the start, everyone told me it couldn’t be done: “No” and “It won’t work” were the responses to almost all of my pitches and presentations. We were proposing a nonprofit in a place where for-profit education has become a lucrative business. We were a non-degree certificate-granting program in Business, one of the least attractive and sought-after fields, that requires among the lowest Baccalaureate scores for university admission.

Iraqi families traditionally set only one path for their children: a degree that can give them a government job, preferably in medicine or engineering. As well, there is no effective, modern business education in Iraq, making faculty — the most essential component of our program other than students — impossible to find.

In addition, Baghdad is one of the most difficult operating environments in the world for a variety of reasons, including its outdated and extensive bureaucracy, corruption, and the informal and local practices that have taken hold after years of conflict and sanctions. Around every corner there are figurative barriers and blockades, much like the actual ones that used to litter the streets of the capital city. There weren’t just a few challenges; everything was a challenge, nothing was easy or straightforward.

So...why do it?

One might be asking after reading this first paragraph, “Then why on earth did you decide to go ahead with the project?” For me, it wasn’t a choice. What I had learned at AUIS about the skill gap and the unrealized opportunities for Iraqi youth in the private sector compelled me to do it.

While at AUIS, it became apparent to me that there were many job opportunities for young Iraqis in the private sector — companies, banks, and accounting firms contacted me every day wanting to hire more of our graduates as they had openings for entry-level employees. “Why can’t you hire the hundreds of thousands of unemployed Iraqi youth?” I asked local employers.

About 35% of Iraqis under the age of 35 are unemployed, with unemployment for women near 65%. Only 11% of Iraqi women work outside the home. Supply was not the problem. For years I heard the same answer: “They don't speak English, they don't have professional or soft skills, and they don't have basic business acumen.”  And so that became BBS’s core curriculum.

Basic skills are needed

In spite of the challenges and naysayers, our fourth cohort of 65 students is graduating in October, 60% of whom are female. Each year we’ve added students, faculty, courses, policies, donors, grants, and partnerships with regional and international institutions and organizations. Every year our admissions numbers continue to go up, and we have over 40,000 followers on Instagram. We started in a room at a friend’s entrepreneurship center and now have our own floor in the office building of one of our donors.

BBS is a one-year program that provides recent Iraqi university graduates with the basic skills they need to be eligible for entry-level positions at startups, SMEs and larger companies. “Basic skills” might sound small and simple, but in Iraq it requires a lot. 

Sadly, due to decades of sanctions and conflict, little to no teaching or learning takes place in Iraqi universities, especially related to the skills a 21st century economy and companies require: critical thinking and innovation, Business and Tech, and facility with the English language.

Our curriculum is four-tiered, offering Professional English, Business Fundamentals, Soft Skills, and Professional Skills. English includes 160 hours of language instruction in groups of 20, with an additional 100 hours of preparatory instruction for students with low language proficiency.

For Business, students take eight 20-hour mini classes that I describe as “crash intro” modules in Business, Economics, Marketing, Accounting and Finance, Business Analytics, Entrepreneurship, and AI in the Workplace. The entire semester is framed and approached with multiple Design Thinking sessions. With Iraq’s local informal economy, we also teach two parts for many modules such as “Doing Business in the World" and “Doing Business in Iraq.”

Soft Skills include activities that require and teach critical thinking, which we weave into classes: reading, writing, research, discussions, and presentation. Professional Skills comprises a 40-hour Career Development Program, which teaches “On the Job Market” skills like self-discovery and networking and “On the Job” skills like Communication, Teamwork, Leadership, Time Management, Decision Making and Problem Solving. All of our programming includes a focus on gender, including equity training that prepares women graduates for challenging work environments and builds allies of their male classmates.

With 100 alumni to date, 100% of our graduates are employed or own their own businesses. They work in a variety of industries and businesses of all sizes, but the majority work at Iraqi startups and SMEs in the digital economy, such as e-commerce, followed by banks and telecommunications companies. Many students are entrepreneurs and have established their own startups.

Recruitment and admissions are key

So how did we do it, going against the tides and naysayers? The answer to this could be a book, but I am going to summarize for the purposes of an article: first, the experience, connections, and knowledge I gained from 10 years of building AUIS – and the skills gap I came to understand there – were instrumental.

We started small, with a pilot class of 20, and tested the water; since then we have grown slowly, in a strategic way, being flexible and agile, yet committed to quality and our core values. We focus heavily on recruitment and admissions, and have a thorough, multistep process to carefully select students – we interview all second-round candidates – with potential and commitment to self-development, prioritizing women and applicants who have had limited opportunities but have excessive potential.

Networking for growth

To support our activities, we have benefited from a variety of support. We leveraged a massive network of people inside and outside Iraq in a variety of fields who have donated hundreds of hours of their time to the various subjects we teach. Student tuition covers only a fraction of operating expenses, so funding from private sector donors, foundations such as PepsiCo and the U.S. Department of State have been critical to hire staff, build our organization, and fund each cohort.

Changing demand from young people

Contextual social and economic dynamics have facilitated our success. There is demand for such a program from the top down and bottom up. It’s no longer true that “All Iraqis want to work for the government.” Many Iraqi youth now want to work in the private sector, especially in entrepreneurship. In part this is the result of frustration with the government; in part it reflects global trends: young people want to be entrepreneurs, to work in places other than institutions. They want independence and to address social and economic issues. In addition, the Iraqi government cannot hire the huge numbers of eager young people.

In terms of top down, one of the main factors holding back the private sector in Iraq is lack of talent. Everyone who works in entrepreneurship and the private sector in Iraq says, “Iraq's problem is not money — there’s plenty of that — it's talent.” Iraqi young people have so much potential, promise, and ambition, but they need basic soft- and hard-skill training as well as access to turn this ambition and potential into action, in any field.

The challenges keep coming

While we have built a strong foundation, challenges arise around every corner and with every new step we take. Probably the most crucial problem facing us is finding qualified faculty. There are few well trained, high quality Business (or English, or Professional Skills) instructors or professors in Iraq, especially those who can teach with the progressive student-centered pedagogy we implement in our classes.

Iraqi students are not academically prepared to be successful in online, especially asynchronous or self-paced, classes, as they require live, highly interactive instruction to ensure an effective learning experience. As a result, we cannot hire instructors from outside Iraq to teach only online, as it reduces student success.

We have addressed these challenges in two ways.  First, we identified and trained recent AUIS graduates or students who have studied business abroad. Secondly, we established informal and formal partnerships with regional American universities such as The American University of Sharjah and The American University in Cairo. Finally, we have partnered with the Texas International Education Consortium, a nonprofit consortium of 35 universities in Texas that identifies experts in its network to facilitate building institutions like ours abroad.

The next steps

Building on our four years of success, we are now working to develop, enhance, and fortify our current one-year curriculum and to branch out to address the multitude of gaps in the market. We envision certificate programs in Business, Tech, and Soft and Professional Skills, a super incubator and accelerator, an Accounting Institute, a Banking Institute, and an English Language Institute.

The key to all of this will be partnerships with regional institutions to develop curriculums that we can tailor to Iraq, and access to faculty. Iraq is in great need of high-quality educational and professional programs at every career level: early, mid, and senior. There is a clear need for BBS to expand our programs and increase the number of students we reach each year. What I can say for now about our progress is that it’s working.

This is the future

I always considered BBS to be very local. We designed and tailored the curriculum specifically to address the Iraqi skills gap, which is unique, deep, and wide. Through participation in the Global Business School Network (GBSN), AACSB conferences, reading about shifts in business education, and engaging with advisors who have done what we are doing, I realized that what we are doing is the future: stacked courses, micro-degrees, and certificate programs. As I once heard “Iraq needs a Chinese restaurant with many options, not a French one with just a few.”