KUWAIT CITY, Aug 17: The Kuwait University Council is heading to approve the recommendation of the committee concerned with including the College of Public Health in the College of Allied Medical Sciences, based on a number of reasons, the most important of which is the university’s academic interest, the enhancement of its scientific status, and elimination of administrative slackness, reports Al-Rai daily.

On the other hand, the University’s Faculty Association rejects this move, and considers that the college represents a valuable addition to the Colleges of the Center for Medical Sciences, and therefore it is better to remain separate and not be included in the College of Allied Medical Sciences. Academic sources at Kuwait University confirmed that “the decision to ‘merge’ will have great benefits for the university, including stopping the waste of public money and controlling the teaching process in the college due to the lack of students and administrators, as it faces a severe shortage of national cadres, to the extent that one of the scientific departments has only one doctor, and the rest are foreign professors.

Reasons

The sources gave the daily three main reasons for the merger saying “the number of faculty members and students is few, and the cost of the student is high, reaching about 10 thousand dinars per year, and the college has no place at the Shaddadiah site.” It is currently operating on a temporary basis at one of the centers. “There are some beneficiaries of the current situation of the college,” the sources said, adding “the decision to merge will not affect the teaching process, and will be in the interest of the university and students, and that there are similar specializations between the College of Public Health and the College of Allied Medical Sciences, and the decision will be to include five departments in the College of Allied Medical Sciences in the interest if the teaching process.”

The President of the Association of Faculty Members at Kuwait University, Dr. Shamlan Daoud Al-Qana’i, was surprised by “the silence of the university administration about the demands rejecting the recommendation of the committee formed by the Acting Vice President for Medical Sciences regarding the inclusion of the College of Public Health in the College of Allied Sciences, a decision that was based on weak and ill-considered arguments.” In a statement to the daily, Al- Qena’i said, “It is unfortunate that the university administration did not respond to this vital and important file, which faces wide academic and scientific rejection by colleagues.

He added, “We have approached the university administration with a request for a quick and urgent intervention, but we have not received any response so far, and we deplore this attitude that requires a quick decision in the public interest.”