Ministry recognises all officially accredited foreign universities

AMMAN — The Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research has decided to start recognising all non-Jordanian universities acknowledged by official accreditation commissions in their home countries, Higher Education Minister Adel Tweisi told The Jordan Times on Saturday. 

The decision came into effect after its publication in the latest issue of the Official Gazette, which included several other amendments on the criteria used for the recognition of foreign universities. 

“It does not make sense to reapply our criteria to each foreign university if we consider that the standards used by most official accreditation commissions are similar to ours,” the minister said, stressing that “the aim of these amendments is to ensure the quality of the different higher education outputs, and to direct students to register in internationally recognised institutions”. 

In this regard, Tweisi expressed concerns over the policies of non-Jordanian universities on international students, noting that “several medicine faculties abroad have separate programmes for foreign students in which the quality of education is way lower than in the main programmes, and we want to prevent our students from falling victims to this”. 

Concerning the rest of the amendments, Tweisi highlighted that the regulations for the recognition of universities and the equalisation of university degrees once the students return to Jordan have been divided into two sets, modifying the requirements for the submission of a foreign degree to the ministry. 

He noted that “although the minimum time that the student is required to stay abroad is still eight months, the new regulation allows them to divide this time into four periods of two months each, while the prior instructions required them to spend the time abroad in a single period”.