Its two main goals were to improve quality and broaden access to higher education, with an emphasis on gender equity.
The earlier reform had covered a wide spectrum, including the institutional structure of universities, questions of governance, recruitment and retention of staff and students, the relationship between teaching and research, management, finance, and the procurement of equipment, land, and textbooks.
The main donors were the World Bank, USAID, the US State Department, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, India, France, and Germany.
[2][3] A major goal of the Ministry of Higher Education is to grant some financial autonomy to universities, which as of 2015 were not entitled to charge tuition fees or keep any income.
The ministry cites a 2005 World Bank study of Pakistan, which repealed similar restrictive legislation about a decade ago.
[2][3][4] The aim of the reform is to foster entrepreneurship, university-industry ties, and the universities' capacity to provide services.
[2][3][4] The ministry's position was vindicated by the outcome of a pilot project implemented in 2012 which gave universities in Kabul greater authority over procurement and expenditure below a certain financial threshold.
A shortfall in funding has prevented the construction of facilities from keeping pace with the rapid rise in student rolls, however.
[2][3] Part of the growth in university student rolls can be attributed to 'night school', which extends access to workers and young mothers.
[2][3] By 2014, the Curriculum Commission established by the Ministry of Higher Education had approved the curricular reviews and upgrades for one-third of Afghanistan's public and private faculties.
[8] One priority of the Ministry of Education has been to increase the share of faculty and augment the number of those who hold a master's degree or PhD.
The wider choice of academic programs has enabled more faculty to obtain a master's degree but doctoral students still need to study abroad, in order to increase the small pool of PhDs in Afghanistan.
The share of master's and PhD-holders has dropped in recent years, as the number of faculty members at Afghan universities has risen.
Between 2005 and 2013, 235 faculty members completed their master's degree abroad, thanks to the World Bank's Strengthening Higher Education Programme.
The ministry also requested funds from the National Priority Programme budget for the construction of ten additional dormitories for 4,000 women students; six of these were completed in 2013.
Girls still encounter more difficulties than boys in completing their schooling and are penalized by the lack of university dormitories for women.
[2][10][11] By October 2014, 117 women (23% of the total) were pursuing a master's degree at Afghan universities, compared to 508 men.
[14] On January 13, 2022, Abdul Baqi Haqqani, the Higher Education Minister of Afghanistan, said that female students would be admitted to universities in segregated classes once they reopened.
In parallel, the Ministry of Higher Education developed a digital library in 2011 and 2012 which provides all faculty, students and staff with access to about 9,000 academic journals and 7,000 e-books.
Projects concerned the use of IT in learning and research; challenges of the new middle school mathematics curriculum; the effect of automobile pollution on grapevines; integrated management of nutrients in wheat varieties; traditional ways of blending concrete; and the effect of different methods of collecting sperm from bulls.