The National Campaign for Students' Rights “Thab7toona” has expressed its dissatisfaction with the results of the meeting of heads of the boards of trustees of Jordanian official universities, adding that the decisions made will contribute to the destruction of the educational environment and the reputation of universities and educational outputs.

In a statement that reached Roya on Sunday, January 6, 2018, “Thab7toona” rejected any attempts to raise tuition fees in official universities, considering that such a decision is not consistent with the reality of university education and its objectives and the economic situation of the Jordanian citizen. The campaign confirmed once again that the government and the official bodies consider official universities only as investment projects to derive profits from at the expense of the student and the parents.

The statement pointed out that what the heads of the boards of trustees of public universities do not know - or what they do not want to know - is that current university competitive program fees are mostly high and above the Jordanian citizen's ability. More than 90% of the total specialisations taught at Al-Balqa' Applied University, for example, have an hourly fee ranging from JD 30-100.

According to Thab7toona, official universities’ boards of trustees should have reduced university fees instead of hiking them up, in light of the already high tuition fees, increased costs of transportation and general overall rise in prices the Kingdom is witnessing.

They pointed out that the national strategy for human resource development did not state raising the competitive program fees -as the board of trustees claimed in their meeting two weeks ago, which was held behind closed doors and without any media coverage.

In a radio interview a few days ago, the Vice-Chairman of the board of trustees of Yarmouk University, Dr. Mohammed Shatnawi, spoke about the meeting’s details, results and outputs, pointing out that the main objective of the meeting was to discuss the financial crisis affecting Jordan’s official universities, in addition to the “enormous” number of students which is affecting the educational process.

Dr. Shatnawi affirmed that it was decided in the meeting to raise the annual competition fee by 20% for the next five years, and then to cancel the parallel program, in response to terms of the strategy set up by the higher education and the national strategy for the development of human resources, noting that the government is still reluctant to make the decision so the board of trustees will have to make it instead.