Education is considered the main pillar which major economics depend on. Problems related to the education sector in Jordan are not only related to the outcome quality but also include the major increase of university and school fees, especially in the last 15 years. What is the main reason behind that?
Fakher Daas: We cannot separate the issue of university fees from the Jordanian economy in general. In the last 15 years, several agreements have been signed with the International Monetary Fund and the state has been gradually reducing subsidies to university and school fees. All these factors had a huge role for us to reach the level of highly increased fees in addition to the high cost of teaching children in schools and universities. Unfortunately, legislations in Jordan don’t have any real control over private schools, therefore, these schools raise their fees significantly without any control. Teaching children in private schools is not a luxury; it is a necessity due to the pressure directed towards public schools, in addition to the lack of sufficient resources at the government in order to provide the minimum requirements of education in schools. We have always demandedfor a certain classification for schools, meaning that a school provides service X, Y or Z, therefore its fees are within a certain average. We demanded for this classification several times. So far, many Education ministers have promised to implement this suggestion but it hasn’t been done. Therefore, we are facing a real dilemma regarding parents’ abilities to keep up with this significant raise of fees for private schools. Moving to the state universities which are supposedly providing minimum fees for students according to the constitution and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights signed by Jordan, a gradual change towards free education must happen, but we notice that it’s the other way around, fees have raised dramatically in the last 15 years and the cost became very high.Sometimes the cost of one child’s education is 40% of people’s income and if they have two children, we are talking about an even greater percentage.
The problem lies on the absence of government subsidy for universities and the lack of financial resources for both universities and schools in general.
These are the reasons why university and school fees increased. Since we promised to keep track of all issues affecting the people’s everyday life in Al-Mo’asher, we will go all the way to search for solutions.
Fakher Daas: These large numbers of employees in managerial positions have been employed as a result of personal-benefit purposes only. Therefore, we can suggest solutions through referring to the global approved ratios regarding employment policies, which in this case is considered administrative corruption in one way or another. I believe that this is part of the solutions we could propose. In addition to that, there is the major and primary issue, which is providing real governmental subsidy for universities parallel with financial and administrative supervision. We’re betting now on national institutions of the society to shed light on this issue. We are betting on these institutions to putsuccessive governments under pressure in order to stop the continuous class discrimination amongst peopl
It is important to pay attention to the investment aspect when it comes to education, not only as an economic lever for the whole society, but also as a real investment in the long term.
