The Arab world is facing major changes in climate, water, energy, demographic characteristics, urban population, waste, poverty, and nutrition, UJ President Prof. Ekhleif Tarawneh said during the First International Conference of the Faculty of Education at Albaha University in Saudi Arabia.

The conference, entitled: “Education: Prospects of the Future”, was held during the period 12-15 April 2015 under the patronage of Prince Mishari bin Saud bin Abd al-Aziz, Governor of al-Baha Region.

Tarawneh presented a paper at the conference in which he referred to the direct impact of those major changes on the various aspects of development.

Tarawneh also tackled the main reasons behind the deterioration of education in the Arab world.

According to him, university admission policies, shortage of faculty members, weakness of scientific research, and the lack of understanding of the importance of quality are among the main causes of low-quality education in the Arab world.

Tarawneh noted that achieving quality HE is faced by the increasing demand for university education, weak demand for vocational and technical education, poor curriculum, financial challenges, and the lack of harmonization between the outputs of higher education and the requirements of the labor market.

The president also explained how Jordan visions and conceptualizes Quality as a process through which HE institutions receive recognition on their performance, operations and outputs.

Its noteworthy that the conference featured 70 speakers, 69 discussion papers, 12 workshop, and a book fair with more than 1,300 titles.