Brent E. Heimann

July 2017 · Middle East·

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Focus on Jordan

H.E. Professor Adel Tweissi, Minister of Higher Education & Scientific Research, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Biznews (BN): To steer Jordan towards a sustainable and prosperous future, there is no sector more important than education. As you mentioned, higher education in Jordan plays a key role in the process of comprehensive and sustainable development at various levels and areas and is responsive to national needs and aspirations. What is the strategy to maximize the impact of higher education in Jordan’s human resources development?

H.E. Professor Adel Tweissi (AT): The human resources development strategy for the coming decade has focused on three pillars: the pre-school and public school, higher education and TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training).

Regarding higher education, we have to achieve 5 strategic goals during the coming 10 years:
Our first goal is to improve the admission university input through fair and equitable admission opportunities for qualified students and expand student financial assistance. There is discrepancy among geographical areas within Jordan regarding public education. We want to instore quotas for students coming from outside Amman and the big cities.

One has to do with the quality of teaching, focusing on electronic learning and integrating OERs (Open Educational Resources). We are establishing a National Center in order to promote the OERs and to organize electronic learning at universities, because until now the universities have been very hesitant during the last decade to integrate electronic learning in their courses and programs. This is probably due to the lack of equipment and the ability of the faculty members to use such methodologies of learning and teaching. The Higher Education Council, which sets up general policies for Higher Education issued a decision 3 years ago allowing universities to use 25% of the content of courses online. But none of the Universities achieved even 5%, which means that there is hesitation. That is the reason why we created this National center for encouraging, promoting and supporting Universities to build capacities to do this.

The aim of the strategy is also to raise the standards of teaching and research to international best standards by promoting the course contents themselves and introducing new specializations that not only respond to the local labor market but also the regional one. This issue has to do with internationalization of Universities; The last 15 years the Jordanian Universities have been struggling to achieve a considerable ranking in the well-known ranking systems like Shanghai QS. The Jordanian Universities have been making some progress in this field, but other universities in the world are doing greater because they are progressing faster. The good news is that last week the University of Jordan has achieved a rank in the first 600 in the QS ranking system and we are expecting them to do better in the future.

University of Jordan is number 8 in the QS classification of Arab World, and the JUST (Jordanian University for Science and Technology) is number 13 among more than 360 Arab Universities, which is significant. But decades before, they were ranking better. This is also part of the internationalization. Another thing we are working on is a plan for the years 2017-2020 to increase the number of foreign students in our Universities. The plan has many ways included and many procedures and we use KPI’s in order to encourage and attract more Arab students. Today there are 14% of international students among the 280,000 students, and this number should increase to 25% by the year 2020.

The following goal has to do with scientific research by supporting the Universities. They have been increasing their research and development, and we are going encourage innovation through the Scientific Research Fund which is run by the Ministry here. We are working on its by-law to redirect its support to exclusively R&D and Innovation. For the time being we only support issuing journalism and other things that are not our priorities.



BN: Arab Potash Company recently signed a MoU with Mutah University, to promote cooperation between educational institutes and industrial companies. How are scientific research and the private sector being linked?

AT: That is true as far as the research is giving support to national or local industrial issues where the University is located. This has to deal with public and private collaboration and cooperation, which is a major goal we need to achieve.

We want to increase the confidence of the private sector in our Universities. One priority is to have members from the private sector in our Higher Education Council and we also want to have members in the Board of Trustees of Universities. The goal is to elevate their participation in taking decisions, and particularly because these two councils are the ones that determine the programs of study at the University and also the priorities of scientific research for example. Once the private sector is involved there will be a guarantee of continuity of our partnership, and the gap that we have now will be narrowed. This smooth collaboration needs to be continued through having representatives of the private sector in these two main Councils, which will guarantee the continuity of the partnership.

The Higher Education Council took a decision a month ago directing Universities to have some dialog with the private sector whenever they start to establish a new study program. For example, if they want to introduce a college of mining, they have to ask the private sector what they think about this program in this specific University.

This will contribute to produce a well-qualified human resource, that is why we are part of this National Strategy for Human-Resource Development. This is the first time that we have a strategy that combines the collaboration of the Minister of Education, the Minister of Higher Education and the Minister of Labor.

Now we have a strategy that combines all of us, we build an annual detailed ex plan. The output of the public education is our input, and our output is the input for the labor market.



BN: That is something I am sure investors think about before investing in a country. How would you describe the Jordanian human capital?

AT: It is an investment for Jordan itself. In higher education, the main business is to establish private universities. For the first time in Jordan, we have announced that private sector can establish technical colleges like Polytechnics. Until now, we have received 15 applications, and we will be licensing 5 or 6 of them to be established.

Today, we will open the door for establishing a private medical University. It happened only once in the history of higher education: a license was given to an investor, but the project failed. There will be now a partnership between this new medical University and another international University, and I am sure this will be qualitative. The by-law that we are going to pass today will state that there has to be a partnership between a local University-to-be and another international University, and that 30% of the members of the University have to be from the partner University. This will assure the good quality of a project.



BN: We are at the midst of the 4th Industrial revolution, that surely will bring opportunities, but also challenges that have to be addressed to transform Jordan into a knowledge-based society. How is your ministry working to tackle those challenges and harness the opportunities it comes with?

Responding to the needs of the 4th Industrial revolution, we have established a hub in JUST for nanotechnology, supported by the Scientific Research Fund, which is owned by our Ministry and by the government itself. We hope this will contribute also in responding to the 4th revolution.

BN: Germany’s Foreign Affairs Ministry states Germany has long enjoyed close and friendly political relations with Jordan, being one of the most important partners of Jordan. Beyond the political arena, the two countries also work together successfully in development cooperation as well as in the economic, academic and cultural sectors. Germany signed a recent grant agreement worth 20 million euros to support the education sector, there is a firm commitment of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), you have the German-Jordanian University (GJU), etc. How would you describe the relationship between both nations, and in which areas would you like to see more cooperation?

AT: We consider GJU as a success story. I have a personal experience with the University as one of my sons graduated from this University a year ago. He went to Germany for a year as the University program states. Right after graduation, he easily found a job in the private sector, which means this University has good-quality graduates. Following up his studies, I noticed that the University is adopting a system of education that is different from almost all other Universities in Jordan, and that the Princess Sumaya University for Technology is following too. It develops critical thinking and working for projects, instead of memorizing for the exams. The steering committee was just an idea in 2004. I participated in the first stones of establishing the University as the Secretary General. And now we are looking forward to expanding it. Today it has 3,000 students, and we would like to reach 5,000 students. Concerning the programs., we would like to modify them so that they get closer to the Fachhochschule system. It is nice that the Council of the University has German citizens. The appointment of the new president has been delegated by the Higher Education Council to the Board of Trustees, although it is under the authority of the Higher Education Council. This is the first time it this happened.

BN: Would you like to convey other PPP opportunities to German institutions?

AT: If German technical colleges want to find a way to invest here, we will support this, and especially with the technical education. We are the ones who license the technical education. If they find private partners in Jordan, we will support that.
There is a secret in Germany that nobody has been able to uncover regarding technical education.

BN: Your contribution to Jordan is undeniable, and you even received the Independence Medal of the First Class. What is the ultimate goal you would like to leave behind?

AT: I hope I will be successful in achieving the goals of the Human Resources Development Strategy. It is a big challenge, not only to me as Minister of Higher Education & Scientific Research, but to the whole country. If I succeed in contributing to the success of this strategy, I think I will be satisfied.

On a personal level, I have achieved many of my ambitions for a man who has worked for himself and not coming from a well-known family, although ambition never ends. Now I put the goals of my country before my ambitions.