Education in Jordan
Maybe a couple of months ago, I was reading an article in Jordan Business Magazine about why Jordan should try to go for educational tourism instead of medical or regular tourism. According to the article, students spend 4 years to get their education; therefore, they end up spending significantly more than what people would spend on either medical tourism or regular tourism.
I have no problem with this logic and it does make a lot of sense. My problem, however, is that education in Jordan is still basically crap when compared with the rest of the world.
I spoke to someone who works as a lab teacher in a private university, and he told me horror stories about the quality of education here. For example, one private university kicked out a few students without good reason and they were reinstated by the higher education board.
Public education is not much better either. The fact still remains that not a single university in Jordan, public or otherwise, made it to the top 500 Universities in the world list. Just check the link:
http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2006/ARWU2006TOP500list.htm
This is a very sorry state of affairs. If you look at how full of our selves we are about education in Jordan, you would think that half of our universities are in the aforesaid list. But the truth is that not a single one is and we just like to delude ourselves.
I am not sure what the minister of higher education does. But I think someone should tell him about this list and our none-existing presence in it and see what he has to say.
One, final thing, I was very happy to see the University of Cairo making the list. It is probably the only Arab University in the list. Egyptians, keep up the good work.
I have no problem with this logic and it does make a lot of sense. My problem, however, is that education in Jordan is still basically crap when compared with the rest of the world.
I spoke to someone who works as a lab teacher in a private university, and he told me horror stories about the quality of education here. For example, one private university kicked out a few students without good reason and they were reinstated by the higher education board.
Public education is not much better either. The fact still remains that not a single university in Jordan, public or otherwise, made it to the top 500 Universities in the world list. Just check the link:
http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2006/ARWU2006TOP500list.htm
This is a very sorry state of affairs. If you look at how full of our selves we are about education in Jordan, you would think that half of our universities are in the aforesaid list. But the truth is that not a single one is and we just like to delude ourselves.
I am not sure what the minister of higher education does. But I think someone should tell him about this list and our none-existing presence in it and see what he has to say.
One, final thing, I was very happy to see the University of Cairo making the list. It is probably the only Arab University in the list. Egyptians, keep up the good work.
Labels: Education, Government
posted by Mohammed Raei at 1:13 PM
6 Comments:
I agree we cannot compete with the world yet but I'm sure we have space for regional competition and I guess that what they are after now.
Now, I don't want to dis SJTU ranking but to share my own experience, I've never been out of Jordan not even to Syria but I've had the chance to meet with many expatriates in Jordan and many many expatriates students in Jordan, I can tell you we are not behind them academically and actually we've proven to be better in many cases.
it's definitely not more than 20+- gab.
Technically speaking you can list things of different kind to start the comparison but once you are done you cannot compare, you cannot say we are not good enough when we don't have the enough resources of almost everything.
Indeed, way to go for us but we should be proud of what we've achieved and look forward to build better and solid future.
I beg to differ. Due to the nature of my work both previously as a factory owner and later in the area of technical sales, I had the chance to meet over 600 engineers(mechanical, electrical, and agricultural) and I can tell based on my interviews with them or through trying to sell them stuff that most of them had little technical knowledge.
If we keep congratulating our selves on being mediocre, we can not really go anywhere.
We agree that educatoin is Jordan needs alot of things. For example:
1.NOT for profit private universities.
2.More money for scientific research.
3.Real use of technology in the educational process.
4.Original American books.
5.Less memorization, more understanding.
6.Real evaluation to fire bad doctors.
7.More precise achievement exams.
8.More scholarships for talented students and teachers.
9.Teaching 20 chapters instead of 9.
10.More field trips.
11.Real training.
But the question is how to get such things?
i agree with mohammad raei on this one , universtiys here in jordan are good enough compared to surrounding countries , i'm a 2nd year student in a jordanian universtiy here , and while we have the educated prof. to teach we lack the money and the addminstration skills
I’m glad someone put this topic for discussion. I just graduated from a university abroad. I tried studying here for a year but I could not. It was ‘the year from hell’ as i like to call it. I studied in the 'best' government university in Jordan and it was a nightmare with no exaggeration at all. The faculty i was in had just been established and it was supposedly 'backed' by important figures. The following points summarize my experience.
* The Professors were inexperienced at all. There was no clear criteria in the way they corrected reports or exams and when I dared to ask one of my professors about the criteria, he yelled at me and said that he had been teaching for 30 years and that that was the criteria.
*The University was filthy. I mean deadly filth!
*The Library is maintained like a vegetable market. The computers at the library where more than 15 years old and hence not compatible with this day and age. The books aren't well maintained at all.
* Cheating was not taken seriously, I remember once being in a final exam. My classmates were more than 80 and my friend and I were the only ones who did not cheat.
*You could smell the urine and feces meters away from the bathrooms. I entered the bathroom a few times in different faculties, (that was mainly because i could not afford to waste the time I usually take to walk to the nearest fast-food restaurant 20 minutes away which was what i used to do before) and there were puddles of feces and urine on the floor in a way that you could not really walk to the so-called toilet! Toilet paper is never there, soap was a taboo, and u were lucky if the water taps where working at all.
I was deeply saddened that this was the case. Jordan ought to support universities by maintaining certain hygiene and research standards. I asked quite a number of friends about the situation right now and they told me that it’s exactly the same with the hygiene and library resources which makes me glad I opted to study abroad. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford to study abroad, so I pray and hope that the situation becomes better and that the people in power of such things would take this severe case into serious consideration and act now before more people leave to study abroad and let’s try to get convinced to spend more money here.
Yasmine,Eaduction is in shambl state of affairsand I like to share with you this articalIy's funny
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