University debts

The Prime Minister yesterday met with the presidents of Jordan's public universities to speak about the level of debt these universities suffer. This has reached the unprecedented level of 117 million JD's. What I hate about such press reports is how useless they are. If you want to know what is really going on, you have to do your own research. Fortunately for you, Khalaf has done this for you.

The press report simply states that there was a meeting, and the PM told the presidents that something needs to be done (like they don't know). There is also a thinly veiled threat that the university independence from more government interference is at stake.

There are eight public universities in Jordan, with about 130,000 students studying for their bachelors degrees, 8,700 studying for their masters and 1,400 studying for their doctorate, according to the web site of the ministry of higher education. Public higher education in Jordan is among the finest in the region, as is attested by the success of the graduates of these institutions almost everywhere they go.

The issue of the debts run up by universities is not new. The rapid expansion in university establishment since the 1990's led to high costs in infrastructure development and the purchasing of equipment and the hiring of staff. Initially, a tax called the additional fees for Jordanian Universities was enacted in order to fund the first universities established (the University of Jordan and Yarmouk University). The tax is paid on almost any type of government and municipal procedure that can be imagined. Despite the high transparency of the ministry of finance on their web site, there is no, sign of the amount of the university fee collected in the 2005 budget. All of the fees collected are listed as a single budget item, with expected revenues of 310 million JD. I suspect a large proportion of these are university fees, since people pay them everywhere they go. On the other hand, the government donated 44 million JD as a subsidy for the universities and municipalities in 2002. I can't find more up to date information on the site but I believe that the number has now risen to about 50 million JD. In any case, it seems that the university fees are not being fully sent to the universities. Moreover, successive governments have established new universities with no long term vision as to how to cover shortfalls caused by spreading the cake too thin. So the universities are now holding the bag.

In order to cover shortfalls in their budgets, the universities started to raise tuition fees a couple of years ago. An uproar ensued, and the government took a decision outside its mandate to freeze raising of tuitions. The universities had to start accepting lower quality students in so-called parallel programs, which are the same as regular programs, but with higher fees for students who are not accepted in the normal procedure, but have money to pay. This helped alleviate the problem in some universities. However, the structural problem remains. The government doesn't want to pay a somewhat modest proportion of what they are collecting in the name of additional university fees to cover the cost of university well being. They also don't want the unpopular decision of raising tuitions so that the students will cover more of the cost.

In the final analysis, there are limited numbers of choices. The easiest is to let the quality of university education deteriorate, with inadequate libraries, laboratories, equipment and building maintenance. The second is for the government to pay up what they are collecting for this purpose in the first place. The third is to increase tuitions. A forth alternative, which many people suspect is the reason for all this, is to privatize the public universities. The general feeling is that it is in the interest of the owners of the private universities to let the public universities decay, since they represent competition. I am not in a position to know the reason why all this is being done, but I think it is not as sinister as the conspiracy theory has it. It is just another example of the government trying to achieve good results without spending money. In Arabic we say (Il bied ma bingala bi drat). You can't fry eggs with farts.

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Update

Al Ghad has a report on the subject. It is no surprise that none of the university presidents interviewed mentioned the university fee tax, and where the money is going. Their prime concern is keeping their jobs.