The social effects of higher education in Jordan

Abstract

Few studies have examined the social effects of higher education. These studies have shown that there are personal and community effects, like low crime rate, greater civic participation, and improved performance across a host of socioeconomic measures. Depending on some and more of the variables or measures of previous studies, the current study tried to determine whether higher education institutions have achieved the goals for which they established, through identifying the social effects of higher education in Jordan, by analysing published data of a group of social variables related to graduates of higher education institutions in Jordan. The study shows that higher education did not show any positive effect across most of the studied variables, such as unemployment, idleness, income, spending behaviour, and family size, which indicates that higher education institutions did not achieved their goals in those aspects, regardless of the reasons behind that.