Students advised to consider job demand before filling university applications

AMMAN — The Civil Service Bureau (CSB) has called on Tawjihi students to give priority to university majors most demanded in the local market and refrain from stagnant and saturated ones as the Unified Admission Unit on Monday started receiving Bachelor Degrees' applications for public universities. 

The bureau has launched a detailed report which indicates the demanded, saturated, and stagnant majors for the 2017/2018 male and female graduates, noting that they receive more than 40,000 applications annually while only seven to nine thousands are hired, according to a CSB statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times. 

"We recommend universities to reexamine the available majors every five years and stop the admission — temporarily or permanently — in majors with few vacancies or low demand," CSB President Khaled Hmeisat told The Jordan Times on Sunday.

"Sometimes we have around 20,000 cumulative total of applications from the same specialisation, so it would take years until they are hired, yet universities continue receiving and graduating more students," he added, stressing that the report's recommendations can help in combating the increasing unemployment rates. 

The CSB report classified nursing, Arabic literature, Sharia and Islamic studies, geography, history, physics, mathematics and statistics as "needed" majors for male applicants, but not for females.

Medicine, surgery, and dentistry were the only common demanded specialisations among both genders, according to CSB, while accounting, English literature, architecture, business administration, media and journalism, and the various engineering majors were labelled "saturated" or "stagnant", except for the urban design engineering to male applicants. 

For her part, director of the unified admission unit Khawla Awad said that they uploaded the report on their website to direct students while filling their application, but they "cannot stop admission completely".She said that the higher education council makes an annual 10 to 15 per cent deduction of available seats in saturated and stagnant majors in accordance with the CSB recommendations.

"The social stereotypes has a role to play in the students' choice for their studies, as the engineering and business majors witness high turnout from males, while educational ones are the most preferred for females," Hmeisat commented, noting that the studying majors and the job demands are subject for continued change over the years. 

He also noted that the public sector data can apply to the private sector as well, saying "the saturated label means that there are plenty of graduates in the specialisation, so even if it's on demand in the private sector, the opportunities may not be enough for that huge number." 

The CSB director stressed the need to focus on vocational education, which he said is in high demand now, adding that vocational employees can have better chances and a faster growth of their professional career than Bachelor Degree holders.

Awad called on students to "take their time" in filling their choices, as there are "no privileges to the firstly submitted applications", noting that the unit will continue receiving applications until August 27.

The unit expects to receive 40,000 to 45,000 applications including the holders of non-Jordanian certificates, according to the official, who said that the number of available seats has not been determined yet.