Higher Education Council adds 15 new university majors

AMMAN — The Higher Education Council announced that it added 15 new majors to be taught in public universities, bringing the total number of specialties offered in the Kingdom’s nine public universities to 540.

The Unified Admission Coordination Unit of the Higher Education Council at the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research on Tuesday started receiving electronic applications from newly graduated Tawjihi (the General Secondary Education Certificate Examination) students for enrollment in Jordanian universities.

Applications can be submitted to the unit’s website until 12 midnight Tuesday, August 25.

“We ask students to be patient with their choice of majors,” said Mohannad Khatib, the ministry’s spokesperson, in a recent TV interview.

The majors, most of which are related to technology and information systems, were added to “offer students a range of new, market-needed options given the large numbers of students with high marks this year”, said Lena Mheisen, a counsellor at a private Jordanian university.

Mheisan said that the ministry has “done a good job by adding majors that are in high demand nowadays such as those that combine business and programming, for example. These kinds of majors are needed in today’s work environment”.

Students who are currently at university and those who have graduated advised Tawjihi students to “steer clear of overly traditional majors such as medicine and engineering. These sectors are suffocating and some of their graduates have been unemployed for years”, said Qais Shraideh, a medicine student, on Twitter.

Shraideh said that the Kingdom is “full of unemployed engineers, doctors, architects and all other ‘prestigious’ majors that students usually go for”.

The unit’s website provides students with each major’s status in the job market, such as being stagnant, saturated or in demand. It also lists the conditions required to enroll in each major, its fees, as well as, the needed documents for application.

The website also offers advice and guidance for applicants along with answers to the most frequently asked questions.

Mohammad Darwish, a programming student, advised the fresh graduates to “resist the pressure of abiding by society’s expectations. Just because you got a high score does not mean you need to study medicine”.