It is heartening to see our students competing hard to get high scores in their school certificate examinations that qualify them to enter colleges. It reflects a high sense of public awareness and how families are viewing, with increasing importance, the crucial role education has in bringing individual development and progress. Gone are the days when anyone who passed the exams would be guaranteed a place in tertiary education. Today, students have to compete hard to win a seat in college.
The problem is that there are not enough places to accommodate the rising numbers of science-stream students. Every year, thousands of them find themselves faced with the difficult choice of either changing their course of study, and thus their entire future, or trying their luck abroad. This means they must have the funds to finance the trip. Not everyone can afford to pay the cost of studying abroad; this is where the state should intervene.
It is true more private universities and colleges — mainly focusing on the sciences of medicine and engineering — are opening, but the problem remains because the number of available places is far less than the number of secondary school graduates.
Officials at the Ministry of Higher Education say they are considering sending some students abroad on scholarships to such places as Australia, Bahrain, Jordan and Belgium. Those going to Belgium would study in French, a language not used in our schools. Again, the number chosen may be limited but at least it provides a partial solution.
Why is the Ministry of Higher Education not sending our students to study in prestigious universities in the United States and Britain? It is there that large numbers of our doctors, engineers, administrators and university professors have graduated and are now occupying leading positions. The usual answer is that the ministry does not have the required funds to spend on scholarships abroad.
The ministry could lobby the higher authorities to make the Ministry of Finance provide the required funds. It could seek the help of the press to remind the minister of finance that he and his colleagues — as well as many other senior officials — would not be sitting in their present positions had it not been for the scholarships the state provided to them to attend college and graduate from American and British universities.
It is the duty of the Ministry of Higher Education to provide a seat, either in our universities or abroad, for every student whose score is 90 percent or more. The state is still financially capable of sending hundreds and even thousands of students abroad for higher education.
