Amman -

The Jordanian student, Ibtihal Zuhair, travels two and a half hours from a suburb of the capital, Amman, to her technical university in Tafila Governorate, where she is studying English in her first year, and relies entirely on loans to cover her studies, but not being included in the list of beneficiaries this year will force her to postpone her semester because The ability of her father, who has a low pension, to afford her university tuition.

As for the student Walaa (a pseudonym), her achievement of 98.7% in high school did not prevent her from obtaining a scholarship or loan from the Student Fund, at a time when the hourly price of the competitive program in the specialty of medicine at Yarmouk University in Jordan reached 100 dinars (a Jordanian dinar is equal to about 1.4 US dollars). ), despite her coming from another city and having to bear the costs of housing and transportation, in addition to her sister’s enrollment in studying at another university as well, which doubles the burden on the family.

Walaa says to Al-Jazeera Net that the cost of studying one semester in the specialty of medicine amounts to 1850 dinars, which is difficult for her father, the employee, to provide, which may force her to postpone completing her studies for a full year and not for one semester, because the specialization system is annual, expressing her dissatisfaction with what she described as a great injustice in System of competition for grants and loans.

Exception of thousands despite the increased need

Figures issued by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Jordan in mid-January indicate that more than 23,000 male and female students are excluded from obtaining university loans or grants, despite having met the conditions for applying for the Student Support Fund, while 57,747 were nominated to benefit. male and female students.

The statistics show an increasing increase in the number of applicants for the fund, as the number increased from last year by more than 11,000 male and female students, at a time when it rose in only 4 years to 37,000 applications.

With reference to the academic year 2018-2019, the number of applicants for grants and loans reached about 52 thousand male and female students, while their number this academic year exceeded 89 thousand.

The price per hour for most majors in Jordanian universities ranges between 45 and 100 dinars, and this constitutes a great economic burden on students and parents, which prompts them to request a grant or a loan to be paid later in order to complete their university studies, even if it is a deferred debt.

Jordanian criticism of excluding thousands of applications for grants and loans, and questions about their evaluation mechanism (Al-Jazeera)

Criticisms of the grant distribution mechanism

Dr. Fakher Daas, General Coordinator of the National Campaign for Students' Rights, which carried the slogan "You slaughtered us," says that the data of the Student Support Fund showed that large numbers of outstanding students were denied access to scholarships or loans, which raises a big question mark about the mechanism for evaluating applications and the method of distributing grants. and loans.

Daas explains that the increase in the number of applicants is due to the large increase in university fees at a time when citizens suffer from difficult financial conditions, indicating that the principle of university education is that it be free, as is the case in most poor countries in the world, such as Yemen and Mauritania, or even rich countries such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, as well as developing countries. such as Egypt and Syria and developed countries such as Germany, Sweden and others.

Some of the parents of students who are not included in grants and loans:

Our daughter is in her last semester and will be deprived of school after 4 years!


Where do we pay?


By God, we tried to collect more points!


Completing the girl’s studies was from grants and loans, and now she will not complete her studies!

#Accepting _ all _ students _ of _ grants _ and _ loans

— starchy |

Nashama-JU (@nashamaju) January 15, 2023

The solution is in the hands of the government

For his part, the spokesman for the Ministry of Higher Education, Muhannad Al-Khatib, says that the financial resources available to the ministry enabled it to include only 33,000 students in grants and loans, which prompted it to take measures such as increasing the value of deduction from government support for universities in favor of the student fund, and providing the government with 5 million dinars from the item budget emergency, which raised the number of beneficiaries to 57 thousand male and female students.

Regarding questions about the selection criteria, Al-Khatib told Al-Jazeera Net that the competition takes place according to the brigade, and each brigade has a share.

“So it is not fair, for example, for a student in Amman to compete with another in Tafileh because the services are different, so you may find a student who got 600 points in Amman and did not get a scholarship or loan, while another student in another district got 150 points and benefited from the fund.” .

Regarding the problem of not including more than 23,000 needy students, Al-Khatib said that the solution is not in the hands of the Ministry of Higher Education, but rather requires a decision at the level of the Jordanian government, but if any financial allocations are made available by a government decision, the Ministry is ready to cover the largest possible number of these students.

Move in the street

Dozens of students and their families participated today, Sunday, in a protest in front of the Jordanian Parliament, demanding that all applicants be included in the Student Support Fund with grants and loans, as in the previous year, in which 100% of the applicants benefited from the fund, while a number of students launched a hashtag on social media. "Accepting all students of loans and grants" to introduce their case.


Suggested solutions

Khaled Al-Alam, Executive Director of the Hayat Fund for Education, says that the problem of funding university students is exacerbating year after year, pointing to a significant increase in the number of applicants for the fund and similar associations, which indicates a real crisis.

He pointed out that some of the applicants are those who were previously well-off and faced with the repercussions of the Corona crisis economic problems that limited their ability to cover the expenses of completing their studies.

Khaled Al-Alam mentions a number of solutions that may contribute to addressing part of the crisis: reconsidering university tuition policies and hourly rates, promoting a societal culture among donors, especially including the importance of spending on education as part of investing in people and building their future, and working to guide parents to their children. Towards professional fields and training centers more than academic disciplines.