Draft higher education law criticised as ‘not in favour of students’

AMMAN — The National Campaign for Students’ Rights (Thabahtoona) on Monday issued a press statement criticising the draft higher education law recently approved by the Senate’s Education Committee, denouncing that  “most of the amendments concerning private universities have been in favour of their owners at the expense of their academic and scientific dimensions”. 

The lack of articles related to the students’ rights and freedoms was one of the issues pointed out in the statement, which highlighted the need for regulations on the students’ representative bodies at the universities. 

“A proper higher education law must include discipline orders on those behaviours that shall not be tolerated in order to protect human rights,” Thabahtoona President Fakher Daas told The Jordan Times, pointing out that “the role of elected representative students should not be forgotten”.

The statement also criticised the regulations on the tuition fees, claiming that the new law “deprives the Higher Education Council of any authority in the supervision of the fees for private universities”.

“The private universities are going after students pockets like predators, raising the fees year after year without a reason,” Daas said, adding that “the legal framework will facilitate this even more”.

In addition, Thabahtoona criticised that “according to the draft law, the government is not obliged to allocate funds aimed at supporting the official universities”, stressing the need for an article that “makes it the duty of the government to intervene in the event an official university is not unable to pay its obligations”.

“The absence of financial support for official universities will push them to get their budget directly from the students,” Daas said, concluding that “this will lead to a major breakdown in the educational system in Jordan”.

When contacted by The Jordan Times, Higher Education Minister Adel Tweisi said that “the draft is in the hands of Parliament, we cannot make any comment”.