Choose your higher education courses wisely

Observer

26-02-2025

'We always advise our students to make the most of this opportunity by making informed choices prior to and during their higher studies that rely on facts and research, rather than hearsay and unfiltered sources,' Dr Rawya al Busaidy once told me in an interview during which we spoke about education, scholarships, and seats.
From my perspective, this useful advice aligned with the philosophy behind the national Your Decision, Your Future (YDYF) Campaign. I first learned about this wonderful government initiative in 2009.
The YDYF Campaign was specifically designed to steer Omani school students in grades 10 to 12 and years 11 to 13 towards making well-informed higher education and career choices based on realistic expectations and best suited to their interests, capabilities and career aspirations. In 2009, it aimed to achieve its objectives through various special projects and initiatives, including targeted school and event visits, meetings with career counsellors, tailored presentations, and the broader reach of media.
Unfortunately, the campaign stopped running for several years at some point, partly because most civil servants had to spend a lot of time on this initiative on top of their regular workload. Besides, back then, most, if not all, Omani students already had access to a career counsellor at school who assisted them in making informed career choices and/or applying to higher education institutions, while they also had access to the informative Daleel al Talib (student guide) published by the efficient Higher Education Admissions Centre (HEAC), When I started working for the Directorate-General of Scholarships in 2012, and based on all the repetitive questions we used to receive from students and their advisors, I noticed gaps in the effectiveness of information. Although students, their counsellors and parents had access to growing amounts of important data, it seemed they needed more support to make sense of all what they were reading and hearing.
There is and always will be a need to support Omani students in making informed higher education choices
To provide some context: It is important to remember that scholarship regulations held, and probably still hold, students accountable for their choices, while sometimes scholarship recipients did find themselves in programmes that turned out to be not well-suited to their talents and interests.
Inspired by the philosophy behind the YDYF Campaign and the fact that it is not easy for students to choose what they want to study and wisely apply for undergraduate scholarships, I requested the ministry for approval to produce an externally sponsored, not-for-profit initiative in 2015. The idea was to circulate contextualised and comprehensive content to prospective undergraduate scholarship applicants by creating a one-stop, easy-to-read and trustworthy resource in English and Arabic.
Sponsored by localised content provided by higher education institutions abroad and in Oman, YDYF Magazine consisted of a body of text and visuals that broke down complex education and scholarship jargon; and expert views into simple and effective sentences. We ended up publishing the magazine for five consecutive years and received positive feedback, especially from parents. In 2019, I even tried hard to turn the popular publication into a digital website application, but the pandemic led to a failure.
I am writing about these past initiatives because there is and always will be a need to support Omani students in making informed higher education choices. Today, Khuta (www.khuta.om) is an example of an Oman entity that is doing a great job offering career guidance to school students. I hope students are using Khuta's services and resources because, as part of their overall and responsible higher education decision-making process, school students should always make sure they base their choices on verified facts sourced from trustworthy media.