Despite the quantitative increase of number of public and private universities from 35 to 62 nationwide (except KRI) with a capacity of 913,652 students, including 31,633 graduate students as of 2017, the quality of education has not improved much in a way that enables graduates to integrate into the job market. One indicator of this crisis is the inability of academics and postgraduate students to publish studies in reputable journals, for example, only 3,395 research papers were published in Scopus database in 2017, this represents 0.04 paper per researcher (43,457 academics and 31,633 postgraduates). This could be attributed to many factors, such as not meeting the standard lecturer/students ratio, outdated curriculums, bureaucratic procedures that hinder adopting advanced courses, lack of incentives and funding, as budget for higher education only constitute about 2% of federal budget and more than 97% are salaries and only about 0.05% goes for scientific activities. 

One way to break out of this vicious circle, it is to improve research capacity of higher education institutions by educating both academics and postgraduates on advanced research methods and equipping them with soft skills, such as presenting papers in conferences, submitting and publishing papers, and creating pages on academic platforms. 

To pilot this idea, the political science college of Kufa University is chosen. It has 30 academics, only 10 have PhDs in Political Science, 10 have masters in political science, and 10 have degrees in other specialties (history, law, economics, etc.), teaching 390 students (370 undergrad & 20 postgraduate). However, it only teaches qualitative methods to postgraduate students, and due to lack of resources, students research outdated topics that are not relevant to the case of Iraq. Therefore, this project enhances the research capacity by educating both academics and postgraduate students on advanced methods, including comparative studies and behavioral statistics, which is describing and analyzing political phenomena by the language of numbers, in order to empower them to conduct field studies that enrich understanding of the Iraqi case with the possibility of repeating studies overtime to measure the same phenomena over time, such as political knowledge, electoral behavioral, and others. The training also includes academic soft skills of presenting, submitting, and publishing studies. 

The project successfully trained 20 postgraduate students on behavioural statistics, as well as, skills of presenting, submitting, and publishing studies. Moreover, it trained 10 academics, professors, on behavioural statistics to ensure a sustainable effect, and conveyed a methodical and thorough understanding of the processes and standards of presenting, submitting, and publishing research. Finally, it submitted 10 academic papers to academic journals by postgraduate students based on statistical analysis with the goal of being published.
Trainees understanding of research methods and statistical analysis has increased from 41% to 61%, as indicated by the results of pre and post-tests. This might indicate the importance of intensifying and spacing out training to provide the timing for trainees to internalize new concepts, as well as, having the training starts from very basic level to advance level, something that was not feasible due to time and budget constraints, amid very low understanding of research method and statistical analysis.