Hashemite University to raise tuition fees ‘to reduce student intake’ — president

AMMAN — The Hashemite University (HU) administration will raise fees for post-graduate studies by 50 per cent to reduce student intake, HU President Kamal Bani Hani said on Thursday. 

“We are raising the tuition fees for post-graduate programmes to reduce the number of students accepted in different majors, since we lack qualified professors with PhD degrees,” Bani Hani told The Jordan Times.

For every 66 students enrolled in the post-graduate programme, at least four full-time professors are needed to give lectures, he said, adding that the tuition fee hike was intended to maintain “high-quality education”.  

Admission to more than 20 majors in the post-graduate programme has been suspended, according to the HU president, due to a shortage of full-time lecturers. 

The suspended majors include economics, energy engineering and political sciences.

Fees for postgraduate studies in tourism and heritage, business and educational sciences have been raised from JD50 per credit hour to JD85, and students on the parallel programme will pay JD110 per credit hour, according to the university’s website. 

Mechanical engineering students will pay JD125 per credit hour, up from JD75, while students on the parallel programme will be charged JD165 per credit hour.  

Students whose scores are not high enough to meet the academic criteria for a subject can enrol instead in the parallel programme, at a higher cost.  

The HU president noted that the Zarqa-based university had not increased its fees since 1996, and said the administration was following the lead of the University of Jordan, which recently raised tuition fees. 

Mohammad Zghayer, the dean of post-graduate studies at HU, said the fee hikes were intended to “bridge the gap between students from different majors”.

Students already enrolled in the university will be excluded from the raised fees, Zghayer said, explaining that increased fees would only apply to new students, starting in the upcoming fall semester.

“Even with the raise in the fees, our tuition fees for post-graduate programmes are still much cheaper than in other universities that offer the same majors,” he told The Jordan Times.

Mohammad Mustafa, a student at the university, said the hiked fees are an obstacle to applicants who want to continue their education and improve their credentials for the labour market.

“Young Jordanians who choose to continue their education are doing it to be more qualified when they enter the job market.... This decision will contribute to lowering the education level in Jordan,” Mustafa told The Jordan Times.

Another student, who preferred anonymity and is enrolled in a post-graduate programme at HU, said raising the fees would exclude prospective students who could not afford to pay. 

“Universities are for all people; they are not a privilege for the rich. We all want to learn and get degrees. This decision will cause conflicts between students from different social classes,” the student said. 

The National Campaign for Defending Students’ Rights (Thabahtoona) said the decision to raise fees “targets students” and urged the Higher Education Ministry to take action. 

The campaign’s director, Fakher Daas, said the university’s administration “should have presented the decision to the public with convincing reasons” before implementing it.

“Raising tuition fees for the regular programme is not acceptable, especially at public universities,” he told The Jordan Times.

Daas added that HU’s website displayed new fees for the parallel post-graduate programme earlier this week, while the university president told The Jordan Times this parallel programme had been cancelled. 

“This commercial mindset is taking over our public universities. The raise in tuition fees is not justified... In fact, it promotes the commercialisation of education,” he added.