AMMAN — The National Campaign for Defending Students’ Rights (Thabahtoona) has expressed its rejection of any potential decision to raise tuition fees at public universities as a measure to mitigate the financial hardships facing them.
In a meeting held at the Professional Associations Complex on Wednesday, Thabahtoona Coordinator Fakher Daas told The Jordan Times that increasing tuition fees will have “catastrophic” results on the output of education and the reputation of Jordanian universities.
“Universities are not corporations; they are not supposed to start seeking investments to obtain financial profit. Funding universities is the responsibility of the government,” he said.
According to Daas, the University of Jordan (UJ) froze a decision to increase tuition fees under popular pressure.
Higher Education Minister Amin Mahmoud told The Jordan Times earlier this week that no public university plans to raise tuition fees for BA students.
UJ, however, plans to increase tuition fees for postgraduate students, and international and parallel programme students, Mahmoud said.
Thabahtoona believes the budgets of public universities should be fully covered by the government, in addition to “other financial contributions”, Daas said.
“Students should pay symbolic fees to feel that they belong to their universities,” he said.
In a statement made available to The Jordan Times, Thabahtoona says the financial hardships that universities face are due to two factors — the decrease of the government’s financial support and corruption at universities.
The government’s support to public universities covered 33 per cent of the universities’ income in 2002, but dropped to around 13 per cent in 2012, according to the statement, which added that tuition fees constituted around 70 per cent of university budgets in 2011.
In his remarks to The Jordan Times, Mahmoud noted that the government contributes JD57 million annually to all public universities, and the contribution varies from one university to another.
International standards set the ratio of academic to administrative staff at 1:1; however, in some public universities in the Kingdom this ratio reaches 1:4, which means additional expenses, the statement said.
According to Thabahtoona figures, the net profit of the parallel and the international programmes at UJ reaches JD12 million annually, while the graduate studies programme generates JD2.2 million annually in net profit.
The campaign says UJ should have found a means to reduce spending at the university’s branch in Aqaba.
Speaking at Wednesday’s press conference, Jordan Agricultural Engineers Association President Mahmoud Abu Ghneimeh said raising tuition fees will make education exclusive to the well-off.
“There should be no advantage for any party over another in access to education,” he stressed, noting that universities are allocating more and more seats to the parallel programme to gain more money.
Students whose General Secondary Certificate Examination (Tawjihi) scores does not qualify them to the specialty they seek to study at universities can apply to the parallel programme, where they pay higher tuition fees for majors of their choice within specific regulations.
Jordan Dental Association President Ibrahim Tarawneh said the public “does not demand free education”, but seeks reasonable and affordable tuition fees.
Deputy Mohammad Qatatsheh (Tafileh, 1st District), who is also head of the Educational Committee in the Lower House, said the committee seeks to reinclude the “university fees” item on electricity bills as part of the government’s contribution to budgets of public universities.
He noted that Jordanian professors at public universities are underpaid, so they end up taking more financially rewarding job offers at local private universities and universities in other Arab countries.
