Students unaware of government report on in-demand majors

AMMAN — As some sectors of the economy are facing a bloated workforce, students say they dread their upcoming fates after university, and most told The Jordan Times they are still unaware of the steps taken by the government to help guide students through the Civil Service Bureau’s annual report on demanded, saturated and stagnant majors.

Although the law field is defined in the report as a major field of concern for both sexes, some of the law students said they are “not aware of this fact”. “I didn’t know that there was a report at the time of my application or that my major is unwanted in the job market, for that matter, until now” Aseel Hatamleh, a law student at Al Balqa Applied University, told The Jordan Times.

While some of the students were unaware of the report, others chose to deliberately ignore it for the sake of their passion for their majors, their distrust towards the report’s accuracy or the fact that they had no other choice.

 “I love English literature, I worked really hard in Tawjihi to achieve its required entering score, and I wasn’t going to throw away my passion or my hard work because of a report,” said Lana Subuh, an English literature student whose major is saturated for both males and females.

 “I don’t think the report’s findings are accurate because it only measures job opportunities in government entities. Three of my friends for example were immediately employed as teachers in private schools only months after their graduation,” Aya Yousef, a student in the female-saturated geography major, told The Jordan Times.

Mohammad Shari, a student in the stagnant major of psychology, said: “I didn’t know about the report, but even if I did, it was either this or no university at all, so I chose this.”

Whatever reason students had for entering these stagnant and saturated majors, they now have their future to think about. Some of them said that turning to an academic profession was the safest choice, while others wanted to give the job field a try because they knew of people who graduated from unwanted majors but were immediately employed, and those of in-demand majors that are still facing difficulty finding work.

Ali Najda, a psychology student said he has a plan to continue his education and enter the academic field, “it really is my only option. There is no work in government entities, and I don’t want to risk opening my own practice”.

However, other students had enough hope to venture out into the job market. Saif Adwan, a foreign languages student, a major which is stagnant for both sexes, said he “still wants to try and work as a translator, which many people make a lot out of if they get employed in big organisations”.

His friend Basheer Neemi added: “We’ve been in this major for five years, and it was in demand when we got in. Now it’s not. That proves that things change. So, who knows, maybe by the time we graduate it will be wanted again.”

With students having different visions of their future, administrative and academic figures in various universities reflected on the process of accepting students into what they referred to as “dead” majors.

“We cannot conceal the fact that although the arts faculty has a fair share of dead majors, we have raised the number of students accepted in each major from 150 to 300. This only shows that education has become a commercial business,” an administrative figure at the University of Jordan, who preferred to remain anonymous, told The Jordan Times.

Computer science professor Widad Qudah said that a friend in the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research told her that “an advantage of the parallel programme, is preventing students who do not score enough in Tawjihi from going abroad and purchasing their degree from dubious universities. At least now, they pay more but receive the same level of education as their peers in the competitive programme”.

Qudah added: “Logically, although that may result in unemployment because we have more students, at least it limits the number unqualified graduates.”

History professor Fawzi Tantawi commented on a flaw in the report itself, saying that “its findings do not take into consideration several factors”. One of these factors, he pointed out,  is that when stating that some majors are saturated for females and not for males, “it does not take into consideration that female students in the university are seven to three, which means that the major itself is not stagnant, but that there are more female graduates, and thus more unemployed females”.