DEAD SEA - The unified admission criteria used by the Kingdom's universities have affected the quality of science graduates, educators and students said this week.
They noted that some students study science out of economic considerations in order to work as teachers after graduation, instead of studying other subjects they like.
"Tawjihi students have no choice, and those who join science departments do so because their Tawjihi average only allows them to join these departments," said Ahmad Ajlouni, an educator in the department of chemical sciences at the Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST).
"We accept some 100 students annually in the chemistry department at JUST and the majority of them did not choose to study the subject," Ajlouni told The Jordan Times on the sidelines of the 11th Eurasia Conference on Chemical Sciences (EuAsC2S-11), which opened on Wednesday.
He added that 80 per cent of the department's students are women and work as teachers after they graduate, while the male students usually work in the pharmaceutical industry.
Mohammad Khatib, another educator from the JUST chemistry department, agreed, adding that the science curricula Jordanian students currently study in secondary schools are not strong enough to prepare them to decide whether they want to pursue science or other fields.
"Instead of using the spoon-feeding teaching methodology in schools, students should be prepared for scientific research," Khatib said.
Science students participating in the conference also blamed the admission system for forcing them to study science regardless of their interest in the subject.
"I am studying chemistry because I had no other choice, and it is sometimes difficult to transfer from one subject to another because of the Tawjihi average that restricts our choices," Huda Shaltaf, a chemistry student at the University of Jordan, said.
Shaltaf added that she even has problems understanding her subject because she does not speak good English, which is the language of science.
Tarafah Hamdan, who is pursuing an MSc in chemistry at UJ, also admitted that it was not his choice to study the subject.
Hamdan pointed out that science students do not receive enough attention from their professors, who he explained have no time to follow up with the huge number of students they have in each class.
Adnan Badran, a founder of the science faculty at UJ and the incumbent president of the National Centre for Human Rights, blamed large class sizes and low admission standards for the poor state of university-level science education in Jordan.
"When the faculty of science was established at the University of Jordan back in the 1960s, we used to accept Tawjihi students with high averages and they had to sit for English tests before being accepted," Badran, a former prime minister, said at a press conference on Friday.
He added that the majority of the first batch of graduates continued their higher education abroad and established science programmes at other universities when they returned.
Badran noted that the situation at UJ started to deteriorate after 1985, when the university lost its independence and became affiliated with the Ministry of Higher Education.
"The number of students in each classroom started to increase and this negatively impacted the relationship between teachers and students, who lost direct interaction with each other," he explained.
By Khetam Malkawi
© Jordan Times 2010
