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By Dr. Mohammad Awad Al Afnan - It is the dream of every single parent to have his/ her child elite in the General Secondary Education Examination or the Tawjihi, as we commonly call it in Jordan. But this dream in times may turn into an unbearable responsibility or a nightmare for some parents, especially if the child gained an admission to a medical school.

I know a student who scored more than 97 percent in the Tawjihi. He always dreamed of being a doctor. He worked very hard for it as he wanted to study medicine in Jordan. He received a scholarship to study medicine in a neighboring country, but he turned down the offer knowing that he would be offered to study medicine in one of the Jordanian public universities. He did receive the offer, in fact; but the cost was extremely high that his parents couldn’t bear. He dropped the course.

The story of the student above is not an isolated case. There are a lot of students who the medical school as a result of financial difficulties. The fees are extremely high, and sometimes the universities, which establish their own fees structure, come up with varied rules and procedures that toughen the life of the students and their parents. It changes their dream into a nightmare. I would take Mutah University as an example here.

In Mutah University, students need to pay JD75 per credit hour. This makes the total more than JD 1500 per semester, if we added the miscellaneous and registration fees. This means the parents need to pay more than JD 4000 per academic year (3 semesters). This does not include the cost of books, travel and living expenses. As such, we are talking about JD 5000 per year. If the student was from another governorate, he/she needs to rent a studio or an apartment with a number of colleagues, which makes the total more than JD 6000 per year. As the average annual income in Jordan is around JD 6000, according to Middle East Salary Survey conducted by Bayt.com, this means more than 75 percent of Jordanians can’t cope with sending their children to a medical school in Jordan.

Interestingly, Mutah University makes the already high cost even costlier by demanding the clinical students (4th year above) to attend Karak and Amman hospitals. It is a month in Karak and a month in Amman for three years. In this case, the students, especially those who come from the Northern or other Southern governorates, need to rent two studios or apartments at the same time. They need to keep their apartment in Karak or Mutah as they need to attend the university and Karak hospital, and at the same time they also need to rent another apartment in Amman as half of their clinical training is conducted there.

We all know how difficult and costly it is to rent an apartment or a studio in Amman these days. The cost of rent is sky high. It is beyond the capabilities of those who already struggle to cope with the already high expenses of the medical schools. Sharing the apartments with other students does not ease the burden much as students need to pay rent for two apartments and pay two electricity and water bills a month. They also need to travel from their hometowns to Karak and Amman, which is expensive as well.

The university needs to find a solution to ease the burden on the students and their parents. They say the hospitals in Amman would expose the students to more varied and complicated cases. But why don’t they allow the students to attend other hospitals in other governorates such as Irbid, Zarka or Aqaba. Irbid, for example, has two big hospitals that have all the clinics and deal with very complicated cases. If collecting the attendance or monitoring the progress of the students is the problem, Mutah University may establish some kind of collaboration with JUST to work these issues out.

I strongly believe that this kind of collaboration is not difficult to achieve, if the University has a true will to ease the burden of the parents who sacrificed almost everything to fulfil the dream of their children. It is becoming extremely difficult to contend with these demands. Mutah University needs to find a solution for this problem as the majority of the parents can’t deal with this situation anymore.

Additionally, public universities, in general, need to find a way to reduce the tuition fees. In 1996, public universities introduced the ‘balanced stream’ to additional income and cover the actual costs of the offered programs. The experience seems successful as a very big number of local and international students registered in our universities, but, unfortunately, the fees kept increasing. It reached a point where sending a child to a university became a source of fear.