University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection 2017+ University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 2021 Modelling Student Flows in the Omani Higher Education System Yasir Salim Al Harthy Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses1 University of Wollongong Copyright Warning You may print or download ONE copy of this document for the purpose of your own research or study. The University does not authorise you to copy, communicate or otherwise make available electronically to any other person any copyright material contained on this site. You are reminded of the following: This work is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this work may be reproduced by any process, nor may any other exclusive right be exercised, without the permission of the author. Copyright owners are entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright. 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For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Modelling Student Flows in the Omani Higher Education System Yasir Salim Al Harthy Supervisor: Dr. Pam Davy Co-supervisors: A.Professor Anne Porter Professor David Steel Dr. Carole Birrell This thesis is presented as full requirements for the conferral of the degree: Doctor of Philosophy The University of Wollongong School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics February 5, 2021 Declaration I, Yasir Salim Al Harthy, declare that this thesis submitted in fulfilment of the re- quirements for the conferral of the degree Doctor of Philosophy, from the University of Wollongong, is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. This document has not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic in- stitution. Yasir Salim Al Harthy February 5, 2021 Abstract Education has a major role in individuals life and society due to its influence in all aspects of life, whether social or economic. Education has become countries’ gateway to scientific progress and prosperity. Therefore, it has become necessary to plan education in order to ensure that its outcomes are properly directed towards developing societies with the latest scientific knowledge and development. Education can be seen as a sequence of stages, pre-school education, school education and higher education. Each stage of education is important in the ladder of cognitive development, as each stage leads to the next stage. Next comes after completing the higher education stage, joining the labour market, which is also available for school education graduates. Attention to planning higher education is a prerequisite to ensure that higher education graduates can easily join the labour market. There is no doubt that there are difficulties such as the incompatibility of the skills acquired in education with the skills required in the labour market, and the absence of an appropriate plan for admitting students in higher education and allocating them to different disciplines. The existence of such difficulties may impede the smooth transition of graduates from higher education to the labour market, which necessitates the importance of studying the characteristics of higher education students and the factors affecting their enrolment in the labour market. The application of the study to Oman was due to the results of previous graduate surveys (2010, 2015, and 2017), which showed that graduates of some disciplines struggle to find a job opportunity. The existence of a statistical system for higher education in Oman and the use of its data greatly helped in identifying the characteristics of students enrolled in the higher education system, which are linked later with the results of the analysis of graduate data surveys. Higher education is the gateway for students to enter the labour market, equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills. Therefore, it is important to have a well- organised planning for admitting students to higher education in line with the needs of the Omani labour market. Referring to the effects, such as long waiting period iii iv for a job and high unemployment rates, of decisions not based on figure and statis- tics is the motivation for carrying out this study on the Omani higher education system. Although there are different data sources available in the Omani higher education sector, in terms of admitted, current and graduate students and graduate employment, data have not been used in an effective way to plan admission into the higher education in Oman. Consequently, there is a surplus of graduates in some disciplines, while other disciplines suffer from a dearth of graduates. The presence of a surplus in the graduates of a discipline will naturally lead to a delay in graduate employment, and the presence of a shortage in the number of graduates of another discipline will lead to the use of expatriate workers to cover the shortage, which will deprive Omani graduates in the future of a job opportunity that would have been within their hands if they study that discipline. The motivation for carrying out the study is in twofold. The first part illustrates the ability of data systems to help policy-makers to make decisions in a timely and appropriate manner, in terms of what is available from data and mechanisms to extract information from it, in addition to the difficulties that may prevent these systems from providing the appropriate data. The second part involves building a conceptual model that explains how the higher education system works in Oman, starting from the admission process and the distribution of school seats, through the stages of the educational process until students exit from their studies, and ending with the period spent by the graduate waiting for the first job opportunity. The study aims to assist policy-makers in determining the level of current stu- dents and graduates in higher education in order to determine future need for grad- uates in the labour market, including discipline and the number of students to be admitted in each discipline. A conceptual model was developed of the higher edu- cation system in Oman. The model consists of three stages, admission into higher education, a transition within higher education, and the unemployment period. The first stage, allocating students to higher education seats usually considers the labour market demand for graduates. The Omani Ministry of Higher Education consults both sectors, governmental and private sectors, to predict the future de- mand for graduates in each discipline. The allocation involves admitting students into higher education funded seats based on students’ sex, high school scores, and required disciplines. This stage of the research examines the influence of three ma- jor factors, weighted average score (WAS), sex and discipline on graduation grades (GPA). The data obtained was in unbalanced form, as there was a larger proportion of females than males due to the high participation of female in the graduate survey (64% graduates participating were females). Several methods have been used to examine these factors. A simple linear regression was used to examine the relation- v ship between WAS and GPA, which was positive but weak (r=0.0343, p=0.0009). Similar outcomes were found for each sex. Due to unbalanced data, and a lack of homogeneity of variance non-parametric tests such as Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis test were used to establish that male achievement in tertiary educa- tion is different from female achievement. Similarly, graduates of different disciplines did not get the same GPA in average. In terms of GPA between disciplines in each sex, Kruskal-Wallis test has been used with a significant level of α = 0.01. The results show the difference between males in different disciplines is not statistically significant (p = 0.099, df=6), while females show statistically significant differences in GPA between disciplines (p < 0.001, df=6). The low relationship between WAS and GPA (r=0.0343, p=0.0009) implies that policy-makers should not adjust the current entry requirement as there is no strong evidence that students with high WAS score high GPAs. The differences between males and females in GPA across disciplines suggests that decision-makers regarding admission should consider these differences. The second stage covers student progression within the higher education system, where students move from one year of study to the next year of study. At each year of study, students can either postpone or leave study, or they can move to another institution or they can change their discipline. The first phase involved estimat- ing the transition probability of student transition from one status to another one. For example, moving from year one to year two of study, or moving from ‘current student’ status to ‘leave study’ status. The second phase involved predicting the number of students in each status. For example, predicting the number of gradu- ates, or the number of students in the third year of study. Markov chain modelling was used to estimate the transition probabilities. Student data from seven aca- demic years (from 2009/2010 to 2015/2016) was obtained from the Omani Higher Education Statistical System (HESS). In order to protect students privacy and en- sure data confidentiality, the data was in aggregate structure rather than individual structure. So, the conditional least squares method was used to estimate the tran- sition probabilities.