Khaberni - The Azm Party Center for Strategic Studies
Discussing the decline of higher education in Jordan is no longer a luxury of thought; it has become an official acknowledgment of a painful reality that everyone feels, from students who have lost their passion for science and are merely seeking degrees, to professors who are exhausted by bureaucracy and disappointed. This decline did not happen by chance; it is the result of policies, administrations, and spending patterns that have turned reform into a recurring slogan without real substance.
Over a decade, the state launched numerous strategies to reform higher education, from the 2014 strategy to the National Strategy for Human Resources Development (2016–2025), then the Strategic Plan (2022–2024), to the new plan (2025–2027). However, the result is the same: more spending, weaker outcomes, and a lack of accountability. Universities are still enslaved to rote learning rather than critical thinking, and education has been reduced to formalities, while the gap between universities and the job market widens, and academic integrity declines to alarming levels.
The painful irony is that spending increases while outcomes deteriorate. Resources are wasted on conferences and slogans instead of developing curricula and labs. Documents pile up on shelves while the reality becomes more fragile. According to the latest reports from the Ministry of Higher Education, some universities spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on polishing their image and buying academic ranking services from consulting services, software, and publicity, while their budgets groan under debt. Some universities have allocated over half a million dollars annually to improve their global rankings without improving their scientific content, resorting to presenting false data about student numbers, faculty members, inflated scientific research counts, and other inaccurate information to international ranking institutions, in an attempt to create a false glory.
Universities are supposed to be the engines of scientific research and innovation, but today they stand defending their financial, administrative existence, and academic integrity. Scientific research budgets in most universities account for 3% of the total budgets, a percentage unworthy of a country ambitious to achieve the goals of sustainable development and reach a knowledge-based economy. Despite the limited allocations for scientific research, they are not spent in the right direction; many universities spend on conferences, formal events, academic publicity, and bonuses for faculty members on published research, lacking in practical, developmental, or even cognitive effects. Reports indicate that one university spent about 200,000 dinars on bonuses for research published in various journals within just six months, yet recently dropped out of the top 1000 universities globally, a clear indication that quantity does not compensate for the lack of quality, and spending in this manner does not create an academic stature without vision and methodology.
The danger increases when plagiarism and phantom publishing seep into educational institutions; academic plagiarism, formal authorship, and publishing research in phantom journals have become almost common practices in some academic institutions, turning academic corruption into a quasi-institutional practice concealed by silence, rewarding quantitative output instead of integrity, and instead of combating cheating, it is concealed in the name of encouraging publication. Here, the university loses its spirit, and creativity is killed in the name of scientific publishing.
The scene becomes darker when we learn that the Minister of Higher Education himself recently stated that the quality of education is declining, and the integrity of scientific research, academic integrity, and unjustified financial spending to appear in advanced rankings, and university debt are in a worrying state, despite all the support, plans, and programs. Yet, the administrative approach has not changed, nor have the mechanisms of accreditation and oversight been reviewed, as if the problem is an inescapable fate.
To address such issues and problems, the solution has been sufficed with forming committees, the same committees, repeated over the years, writing the same reports, proposing the same solutions, while at the same time some committee members defend the same dysfunction in a closed loop of conflicting interests and exchanging roles, under different titles elsewhere. Thus, academic dysfunction has become more organized than spontaneous, supported by bureaucracy and fueled by a culture of impunity. Thus, reform has turned into a theater where the same scene is replayed with different names, while the crisis deepens year after year. The result is more retreat and loss of public trust in Jordanian universities, which were once the mind and conscience of the state.
The decline in academic integrity is no longer just individual cases, but has become institutional behavior covered by silence. Everyone should know that academic integrity is not a luxury of ethics, but a condition of the university's very existence.
Today, universities must be convinced that ranking cannot be bought with money; it is earned through methodology, solid research, and a genuine scientific reputation. What is happening today is marketing the facade, not building the substance, and wasting limited budgets that would better be directed to supporting genuine researchers and developing digital labs and skills.
Amid this deterioration, some universities talk about digital transformation and institutional development, while the core of the academic message is eroding from within.
In this bleak scene, the vision of the Azm Party presents itself clearly as a realistic and courageous alternative for reforming higher education, starting from an accurate diagnosis of the dysfunction and offering practical, implementable solutions, based on three main pillars: accountability, efficiency, and linking education to the national economy.
Azm Party sees that the essence of the crisis lies in the absence of true regulatory role and lax accountability, which has allowed the proliferation of bureaucracy and financial wastage and academic deception. Thus, reform is not measured by the number of plans, but by the boldness of accountability.
Therefore, the vision of the party calls for establishing an independent and effective educational oversight body directly affiliated with the Prime Minister or the Parliament, which has financial, administrative, and academic auditing powers, and monitors university spending and research budgets.
Azm proposes that the performance evaluation of universities be done by a neutral committee involving parties, with the evaluation based on clear indicators including the quality of teaching, integrity of scientific publishing, employment rates of graduates, and research cooperation with economic sectors, as support should be granted based on results, not relationships.
The vision affirms that the Higher Education Accreditation and Quality Control Authority, which is supposed to guarantee quality, bears the responsibility for university data, quality of research, and application of strict accreditation standards. However, it now suffices with paper reports and grants accreditations without accurately reviewing all educational outputs, while the ministry acknowledges the decline without radical solutions. Therefore, its work must shift from granting papers to a true evaluative, regulatory institution, possessing scientific and social impact measurement tools, and redefining quality based on the principles of integrity and innovation, not administrative facade.
Azm's vision believes that universities cannot prosper with a traditional administrative mindset or through favoritism in appointments. Reform starts by selecting university leaders based on competence, integrity, and experience, not loyalty or relationships.
The vision calls for separating academic work from administrative tug-of-wars, and implementing a transparent system for academic and research evaluation, where no one is promoted except based on genuine scientific output and clear community service impact.
It also emphasizes the need to protect the voice of the competent and independent academic, who is often sidelined today in favor of those with influence or protection from various quarters, thus weakening the spirit of the university as a place for free knowledge and responsible debate.
Azm Party's vision sees that reforming higher education is not just an academic matter, but a national economic investment. The university is the talent factory, and when it fails in its role, the state incurs the costs of unemployment, low productivity, and brain drain.
Hence, the party proposes linking education outcomes to job market needs by redesigning academic programs in cooperation with the private sector and national industries, and establishing joint sector councils to determine the required skills in each specialty and review them periodically.
The vision also calls for directing spending towards applied research and digital innovation, not quantitative publishing, and for transforming universities into incubators for entrepreneurship and the knowledge economy. Research that does not contribute to solving societal problems remains a burden on development, not a lever for it.
Azm Party's vision places academic integrity at the heart of reform and calls for establishing a national observatory on research integrity to monitor cases of plagiarism and phantom publishing and issue annual public reports, and prevent those who have handled academic or administrative suspect cases from holding leadership positions.
It also demands launching a unified national research database and mandatory auditing of all publicly funded research, in addition to tightening laws against academic plagiarism and listing it as a serious offense that requires dismissal and legal accountability.
