Friday 06 / December / 2024
Muscat: Free college courses at the Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) are being traded online by senior students.
The free to enrol government-funded university has launched a probe after some senior students booked places on courses with the sole intention of selling those places to junior students.
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At SQU, students preparing to graduate and entering the final year of study are allowed to access the online booking system for courses one day early, in an effort to ease their final year course choices.
But some students are block-booking courses open to all years so that they can sell the seats to freshers.
The university has issued an online warning against the “trade” in seats.
SQU’s Deanship of Admissions and Registration issued a statement on Monday which read: “Students are not entitled to register for un-needed courses (elective or primary) in order to trade them. “Any student who does so will be subjected to legal accountability and will face disciplinary actions according to the Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) rules.”
Since the registration period opened on Sunday, a number of students have been complaining about senior students who register unnecessary subjects through the online portal in order to sell them later to the juniors.
Courses like Arabic and Omani society and some other electives are available for students of all years.
Some students said on social media that their senior peers are even reserving courses for school graduates who have not joined a college yet.
The registration system at SQU gives priority to senior students to register subjects online as they are given a chance to access the portal a day ahead of the others.
While the system was designed to facilitate their final year and ease their graduation process, some are taking advantage of the system to cash in on the needy juniors.
Students from the 2011 batch finished registering last Sunday; 2012 students finished on Monday, while Tuesday was reserved for the 2013 batch.
As a result, new students will be left with fewer seats as they will only able to register online on Thursday. An official at SQU explained that students use social media to offer courses at different prices.
“Some people think it is okay to book a seat for a friend or a family member. This is considered illegal and unfair to the new batches,” he said. The university will take legal action if they find any student using social media to promote this illegal activity, the official stressed.
“We have orders from the university’s head of departments that this practice must stop,” he said. However, students blamed the small number of seats available per lecture.
In a Twitter poll, 65 per cent of the 1,323 participants agreed that the small number of seats was the reason behind the phenomenon of reserving and trading seats.
At least 10 per cent thought this was happening due to the quality of lecturers as some prefer certain teachers, while 21 per cent said the current order of batches could be the reason behind the appearance of such a practice.
Twitter users expressed anger against ‘course sellers’ and condemning the ‘unethical act.’
“The timeline has turned into an auction, some are selling courses and others trading them,” a student said, while another described what is happening on his Twitter timeline as “a market.”
Students shared a screen-grab of a chat where a student is allegedly asking for OMR20 for a course he had booked earlier.
Nasser Al Hanai, head of the SQU student council told the Times of Oman that such acts do not represent the university and that “students should focus on their education instead of making money.”
He also explained that punishment will not fix the issue. “The administration should search for the roots of the problem and work to solve them,” he added.
“Such acts affect our university’s reputation and we certainly hope we will not to be forced to pay for teachers and students to get what is supposed to be free education.”
SQU is the realisation of the promise made by His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said during the 10th anniversary of Oman’s National Day in 1980.
Construction started in 1982 and the first SQU students were enrolled in 1986.
In accordance with the Royal Directives of His Majesty, the university commenced with five colleges; namely Medicine, Engineering, Agriculture, Education and Science. Furthermore, the College of Arts was established in 1987, followed by the College of Commerce and Economics, which was developed in1993. The College of Law joined the University in 2006 and finally the College of Nursing was established in 2008.
