The Academic Race between Reality and Ambition
By: Prof. Dr. Younes Megdadi
A few years ago, we noticed a change in the orientations of Jordanian universities towards the race to obtain quality certificates and local and international academic ranking, which many of the academic community see as one of the most important bold steps to go through with its multiple files with great requirements in order to get out of the box of traditional education to quality education within the concepts and standards of academic education A new one that changes the inputs and outputs of educational and educational universities based on the principle of competitiveness to enable universities to highlight their image and identity locally and globally and at the same time to enable universities to market themselves after obtaining these certificates, which are issued by specialized and prestigious international institutions known to all.
Jordanian universities orientation towards quality and academic classification has become the focus of everyone’s attention in an effort to enter the academic race, which is often welcomed and appreciated for its efforts despite everyone’s knowledge of the modest capabilities and expertise of most universities, including the scarcity of specialists in these files and their standards on the one hand, and the academic and research structure of On the other hand, which is the infrastructure for the various requirements of standards, which requires tremendous efforts to meet those requirements to obtain quality certificates and local and international academic ranking.
Everyone follows, for example, and is not limited to the results of the academic classification for the past few years, both at the local and global levels, including the QS ranking or others, which showed that the ranking of universities as a whole is in relative improvement, but the majority of them do not see the improvement that we look forward to compared to the level of improvement in order in the universities of the region for example, the indicators of these results confirm the existence of lingering obstacles that hinder universities’ enthusiasm towards quality and academic classification and its requirements, and the University of Jordan is the only one for the first time to enter the Shanghai ranking in the category of a thousand universities globally, and this is an honorable thing and an appreciated attempt, but on the other hand, many observers ask why Jordanian universities do not present and discuss all the obstacles they face in the files of quality and academic ranking, objectively and collectively, instead of individual competition in a specialized conference in which all universities participate to discuss all the obstacles within research papers to come up with recommendations that may serve everyone and experiences are many, including what Malaysian universities have done, for example not to be limited, which has thus brought it to its enviable advanced global ranking with a large number of its universities.
If we look closely at the mechanisms of work with quality files and academic ranking in our universities, we will find that they need more accurate awareness, know-how and high-level cumulative experiences to be able to translate all standards on the ground so that their launch is solid and away from fluctuation, and everyone knows that many universities in the region have paid attention to these important issue and the solution was to seek the assistance of experts from different countries of the world, and it is now ranked among the best universities in the world, and some may believe because of the abundance of financial or other capabilities and this is true, but it was a successful solution to reach very advanced ranking and within record time, realizing that quality and academic ranking have become one of the requirements Global academic competition is inevitable.
We are optimistic about the performance of our universities, but we say frankly in light of academic race that there is an urgent need for a review pause to search for solutions to all its obstacles, and this does not harm anyone at all. The march that everyone is looking forward to, with everyone aware of the speed of the academic race towards these two files, which are now drawing the map for the future of universities and their competitiveness locally, regionally and globally.
