Job Discussion Forums

[SandyMan]

The announcement from the MoHE last Tuesday, that the majors would be divided between the five colleges of applied sciences for year 3 and 4, has caused quite a lot of distress among our students here at Nizwa College. We're losing IT and Business as majors and we are going to become a "Centre of Excellence" for Communication and Design.

As two thirds of our students major in either Business or IT, they'll presumably all go to Ibri (where they will be offering Business, IT and Design). Not a single student I've spoken to in the last week wants to go to Salalah. In exchange, we'll probably get some of Ibri's Communication students - but I understand that some of the Comm students in Ibri are keen on Sur. As Ibri is also teaching Design, there won't be any Design students coming to us from there. From what I can work out, we might make a net loss of about 50% with regards to student numbers for Year 3 when it is launched next autumn.

I'm wondering whether anybody at the MoHE has sat down with a calculator before these decisions were made. If I were a Year 1 student and I had to choose my major within the next four weeks, I would think very carefully before doing Year 2 in a major that would not be offered in Years 3 and 4 at that college. Similarly, I wonder what the current Foundation students keen on IT or Business are making of it all. I wouldn't be surprised if student numbers will come down quite a bit here at Nizwa College in the autumn � at all levels.

What are students saying in Sur, Sohar and Salalah I wonder?