At universities, numbers can provide indicators, rankings can determine positions, and academic accreditations can demonstrate compliance with quality standards. Yet the greatest measure of any university remains its graduates: the people who enter as students and leave as graduates, then move into the labor market to put what they have learned to the real test, turning knowledge into a profession, specialization into achievement, and a degree into a position, responsibility and impact.
اضافة اعلان
It is from this perspective that the initiative launched by Applied Science Private University to honor a group of its distinguished graduates, under the patronage of Board Chairwoman Umm Haitham, takes on a meaning that goes beyond simply holding a graduation-related ceremony. The initiative, described as the first of its kind in Jordan and the Arab region, brings graduates back to their university years after leaving its classrooms, not to celebrate the degrees they earned on graduation day, but to recognize what they have achieved with those degrees, where they have reached, what they have accomplished, and the positions they now hold in Jordan and abroad.
Here, in particular, the image of Umm Haitham emerges as a mother who followed her university’s children as they entered as students and later wanted to know where they had reached after completing their bachelor’s degrees and growing in life and their professions. A mother’s relationship with her child does not end when the child leaves home, and a university that regards its graduates as its children should not consider its relationship with them over when they pass through the graduation gate. For this reason, Applied Science Private University brought together more than 50 of its graduates and their families, along with the university’s academic and administrative leaders. This time, however, they returned as professionals whose names had become established in positions of work and achievement.
Among them were company executives, doctors, pharmacists, engineers, accountants, media professionals, lawyers, judges, politicians, and specialists in various scientific and professional fields. Some had reached senior positions in state institutions and the private sector in Jordan, while others had assumed professional, administrative and academic positions abroad, both regionally and internationally. In reality, these graduates now represent one of the most important pages in the university’s academic record, because when graduates succeed in the test of the labor market, they provide practical evidence of the quality of the institution that helped shape them.
That is why the focus of the event was not on students, but on outcomes. Graduate outcomes are the most important and credible measure when assessing a university. Buildings can be developed, programs expanded, laboratories modernized, and rankings can change from one year to another. But a university’s ability to produce graduates who possess knowledge and skills, compete effectively and reach senior positions is the result toward which all elements of the educational process converge.
When a university is present at the forefront of academic rankings locally, regionally and internationally, the significance of that presence becomes greater when viewed alongside the careers of its graduates. A ranking provides a number and a position based on a set of indicators, while a graduate provides living evidence of the university’s ability to turn its programs, plans, faculty, laboratories and academic environment into human capital that works, produces, advances and assumes responsibility.
From this perspective, Umm Haitham’s initiative appears to be much more than an honoring ceremony. It is an attempt to assess the university through its graduates after graduation and return to a question that should remain present before every higher education institution: What happened to the student after we awarded the bachelor’s degree? Did the graduate find a place in the labor market? Did they develop professionally? Did they become capable of leadership and decision-making? Were they able to compete outside Jordan? And did the years spent at university become a genuine source of value in their lives, in the institutions where they work and in society?
These questions make graduate tracking an integral part of assessing education quality and make “graduate impact” one of the most important indicators through which a university can evaluate itself beyond its walls. A medical graduate carries the university’s name into the hospital, an engineer into a project, a pharmacist into the pharmaceutical sector, a lawyer and judge into the field of justice, an accountant into the business world, a media professional into the public sphere, a manager into an institution, and a politician into a position of responsibility. Each of them, knowingly or unknowingly, presents an image of the academic environment from which they graduated.
Dr. Haitham Abdullah Abu Khdeija, Vice Chairman of the University’s Board of Trustees, said during the ceremony that investment in education is measured by what it leaves in a student’s character, career and position in working life. He said the university’s responsibility extends to building individuals, strengthening values and preparing students to use their knowledge and skills in serving themselves and their communities. His remarks also reflected the legacy of Haj Abdullah Abu Khdeija, may he rest in peace, whose vision was based on the belief that education is a mission to build people and shape the future, and that the true value of knowledge emerges when students are able to turn it into skills, contribution and achievement.
Between the legacy of Haj Abdullah Abu Khdeija and Umm Haitham’s patronage of the gathering, the picture of an institution that began with an investment in people becomes complete. Years later, it returned to look for those same people in their workplaces and see what they had accomplished. In this sense, the honoring becomes an act of mutual appreciation: the university tells its graduates that it continues to follow their journeys and take pride in them, while the graduates return carrying the results of the years that separated their classroom seats from the positions they ultimately reached.
The initiative also has value within the university itself. When today’s students see a graduate who once sat in the same classroom and later became a doctor, engineer, pharmacist, lawyer, judge, media professional, manager or senior official, they are not hearing an abstract discussion about the future. They are seeing a living example of what education, hard work and determination can produce. The graduate’s story therefore becomes more than a university memory; it becomes part of the educational process and a direct message to the generation that follows.
Bringing graduates back to their university also opens a door that is more important than the honoring itself. These graduates are now part of the labor market and have direct knowledge of what professions require, what skills have become essential, where gaps exist between education and practice, and how technology, artificial intelligence and economic changes have reshaped jobs. Listening to them provides the university with feedback from the field that it can use to develop future programs, plans and graduate outcomes.
Dr. Haitham Abu Khdeija’s announcement that honoring distinguished graduates will become a recurring initiative held every semester gives the idea a lasting institutional dimension. The objective is not simply to bring together a group of graduates once, but to build a relationship that follows the university’s graduates generation after generation, documents where they have reached, benefits from their experiences and places their success stories before students who are still at the beginning of their journeys.
For this reason, the initiative, described as the first of its kind in Jordan and the Arab region, could establish a different concept for the relationship between universities and their graduates: that graduates remain part of the university after completing their bachelor’s degrees, that their professional journeys become part of how the university evaluates its performance, and that graduate outcomes take center stage in discussions of quality, excellence and rankings.
A university can speak about itself through numbers, accreditations, rankings and research, all of which are important elements. But there is another form of testimony that is difficult for any indicator to surpass: for its graduates to sit before it years later, among them doctors, pharmacists, engineers, judges, lawyers, accountants, media professionals, politicians, institutional leaders and decision-makers, allowing the university to say that these individuals entered through its doors as students and left them to assume these positions.
That is why the image of Umm Haitham overseeing the honoring of Applied Science graduates carries a meaning that goes beyond the occasion itself: a mother bringing her children together after they have grown, asking about them after they have left, celebrating how far they have come and bringing them back to the home where their academic journeys began. They entered Applied Science years ago carrying their dreams and returned today carrying their achievements, responsibilities and experiences.
The scene confirms that the greatest certificate a university can receive is for its graduates to speak for it through the positions they have reached, the responsibilities they have assumed and the impact they have made after earning their bachelor’s degrees. This is the story that deserves to be honored, and it represents an extension of the legacy of Haj Abdullah Abu Khdeija, may he rest in peace, the founder of this national educational institution, which has grown into a prominent Jordanian landmark and an educational presence on the global stage.
