Students in Higher Education Institutions: A High-Risk Group for Suicide

" A group of parents whose children killed themselves at university are campaigning for a change in the law to make the institutions more accountable.

They are calling for universities to have a legal duty of care towards students - the same duty that applies to employers to keep their staff safe at work." (BBC, Student suicides: 'Universities must do more to protect students from harm', Jennifer Harby, 25 April 2023)

There are many risk groups for suicide in any society. A mental health study conducted by Shannon et al (2020) titled, "Risk of Suicide and Self-harm in Kids: The Development of an Algorithm to Identify High-Risk Individuals Within the Children's Mental Health System" has very important implications for identifying high-risk groups for suicide. The study has found that it is possible to identify high-risk groups for suicide and self-harm in kids within the Canadian mental health system. The following is a brief quotation from the Abstract of the study.

" Suicide is the second leading cause of death in adolescents within Canada. While several risk factors are associated with increased risk, appropriate decision-support tools are needed to identify children who are at highest risk for suicide and self-harm. The present study aimed to develop and validate a methodology for identifying children at heightened risk for self-harm and suicide. Ontario data based on the interRAI Child and Youth Mental Health Screener (ChYMH-S) were analyzed to develop a decision-support algorithm to identify young persons at risk for suicide or self-harm. The algorithm was validated with additional data from 59 agencies and found to be a strong predictor of suicidal ideation and self-harm. The RiSsK algorithm provides a psychometrically sound decision-support tool that may be used to identify children and youth who exhibit signs and symptoms noted to increase the likelihood of suicide and self-harm."

Students at all levels of education, especially at colleges and universities, are regarded as a very high-risk group for a variety of reasons: pressures of academic study, pressures of tests and exams, anxiety and social pressures of high performance and high grades, sexual harassment of female students, and ill-treatment by some teachers, senior managers, and even the Directors of Student Affairs who are supposed to defend students and take up their complaints instead of being hypocrite and puppets to senior management like the case of Mohammed Al-Barashdi who always stand with the management against the genuine interests of students at A'Sharqiyah University in Oman.

"The customer is always right" is a slogan that most businesses try their best to apply in offering their services to their customers. They believe that their business can be successful only through customer satisfaction and content with the service offered. The slogan is as old as commerce itself. It was popularized by a number of international retailers such as Harry Gordon Selfridge in London and John Wanamaker in New York from the early 20th century onward. In the USA it is particularly associated with Marshall Field's department store in Chicago. The store is an icon of the city with its very popular slogan “Give the lady what she wants”. These creative businessmen advocate that the customers should always be happy with the service and their complaints must be treated seriously so that they do not feel they have been cheated or deceived. Variations include "le client n'a jamais tort" (The customer is never wrong) which was the slogan of the celebrated French hotelier César Ritz who said, "If a diner complains about a dish, immediately remove it and replace it, no questions asked". Another variation of this slogan used in Germany is "Der Kunde ist König" (The customer is a king). Accordingly, the core value of the business and its trading policy then is putting “customers first” if it wants to be successful.

Of course, the slogan is not intended to be taken literally. It is just an attempt to make the customer feel special by inculcating into the staff of the business the disposition to behave as if the customer is always right, even when he is not.

However, this slogan ignores the fact that some customers may be dishonest or try to misuse the service or product, which will lead to losses. Complaints cannot be accepted at face value; the “caveat emptor” is a common legal maxim representing this attitude towards the customers. Sometimes, it is in the interest of the business to fire some customers if they do not have a legal basis for their complaints. The effort is not worth the money they are paying as they have unreasonable requests and expectations. The products and services are not for everybody and the job of the staff is not to make everybody happy!

Are students in higher education institutions customers in the same way as customers of retailers and service providers? Most people think they are; though they are a special sort of customer. Students do not find it easy to cut off their relationships with their academic institutions as most customers do with their service providers. They have already signed contracts and documents binding them to the institution for at least a term, a year, or even the whole program of study; so they cannot walk away from this relationship in a couple of days. These institutions offer higher education as a service to students and, accordingly, they need to put them first. But do they all do that? From my personal experience in different higher education institutions in many countries, I would be inclined to say a large number of these institutions do not, especially in developing countries. They try their best to attract students to study with them through any means; some of them are really dishonest. Many look at the students as “cash cows”. When they want to increase their budgets or make more profits, they use despicable means to “milk” the students. They illegally decrease the number of books and study hours for the students in order to reduce the number of teachers and then make more profits. They employ unqualified teachers or even “housewives” because these “semi-teachers” accept low salaries and low wages and all this is done illegally! Students complaints are almost always ignored and the solutions offered to them are mostly superficial and do not deal with the real causes of the complaints. Teachers who abuse the students in the classrooms and use bad language get renewed year after year even though there are tons of complaints against them! The contracts of good teachers are not renewed and the students lose their good service. The renewal of the contract is not based on performance but on personal relationships and sometimes on bribery and the corruption of money-minded senior management.

The implementation of the slogan may involve a number of dimensions or aspects but, in general, there are two extreme approaches for dealing with students’ complaints. The first approach is to give in to students and meet all their complaints with surrender. Students are the main customers of the colleges and universities and the revenue depends on them so all the complaints are “legitimate” and justified even if this means “passing” the students when they do not deserve to pass! This is a very dangerous approach that may lead to serious problems and comprises at the expense of the teachers and quality education. This usually happens when the college or university is run by people who are timid or cowardly or “pig-headed”, incompetent, and corrupt. They are after money at any cost.

The second extreme approach is to be “tough and rough” with the students and ignore most, if not all, their complaints or, at best, deal with the students’ complaints in a trivial way. This is also a dangerous approach. The majority of university students are mature people and they come to the university to learn, educate themselves, and get degrees and certificates which are worth the trouble and find them a job and a place in society. They do not come to be cheated and deceived or mistreated by some bad teachers. To deal with their complaints in a trivial way or reject them out of hand because of the mistaken belief that “students tell lies” is completely unacceptable. Students do need people to listen to them, understand them, and solve their problems with understanding and compassion. This uncaring approach is used when those in charge of student affairs are weak and uncaring and they themselves are “trivial” and hypocrites. They try their best to appease the university administration in order to keep their jobs at the expense of the students. They do not care about the academic aspects of the study programs and they focus their efforts on only some social activities as if the university is a social club, not a place of learning with serious academic tasks. Such people deserve to work in a wholesale market rather than lead the student affairs department at a university!

The two approaches above are faulty and dangerous. The best approach is to hold the stick from the middle. We need to deal with students’ complaints in a sympathetic and objective way. Students are not “always right” in their complaints but they need to understand why they are wrong in this complaint or that. The educational and counseling aspect of dealing with their complaints is vital. If they are wrong, they need to understand why they are wrong and how the issue is to be solved without any compromise to their academic study and their future. This requires the teachers, heads of departments, directors, deans, and senior managers to open their doors to the students, listen to them, meet with them, and understand them. It is a very bad policy to keep away from students and live in “ivory towers”. In some universities like A'Sharqiyah University in Oman, it is a great sin, and even “a crime” for any student to approach the office of the VC or his Assistant VC (Hamed Al-Hajri) and try to meet him for any issue or complaint. The student may be met with all sorts of threats of punishment and even being sent to jail by the police! The VC is too busy with meetings and visiting people of high positions in society so he is not free for students! Most of these meetings are “trivial” and a waste of time and money. All his efforts are aimed at covering up his incompetence and corruption.

We always say, “The students of today are the leaders of tomorrow”. One of our basic jobs is to meet with the students, listen to their complaints and solve them, look into their demands, and meet them objectively and educationally. Regrettably, this does not happen now in many colleges and universities leaving students frustrated and inviting serious problems.

Higher education institutions are not commercial enterprises to be run by people with a commercial mentality like Abood Al-Sawafi, Hamed Al-Hajri, Mohammed Al-Barashdi, and the company. The service these institutions offer is of paramount importance and it is of direct relevance to the very existence of the nation and its future. Higher education cannot be taken lightly and should not be left to be managed by “money-minded” people like these idiots at the expense of the future of our students.

This brings back to me bitter memories of A’Sharqiyah University in Oman. I still remember what Abood Al-Sawafi (former VC) and Hamed Al-Hajri (Assistant VC) used to force the students at A’Sharqiyah University to pay their tuition fees or any small amounts of money they owed to the University. They used to go around the classrooms of the Foundation Program and the lecture rooms of the colleges and “kick off” students out of their classes in a very insulting and degrading way. The students used to come to me to complain about this disgusting and impolite “procedure” and I used to allow them back to their classes. When Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri came to know about what I was doing, they sent direct instructions to my teachers at the Language Center and Foundation Program to allow students back in classes only through direct permission from them not from me as the Director of the Language Center. The procedure of sending students off classes because they owe small amounts of money to the college or the university is very disrespectful to the students and their families, especially in the very reserved society of A’Sharqiyah region where most of the students live in small villages and everyone knows one another. This is very humiliating, especially to the female students who used to cry in the hallways because they were feeling shameful. One of them went as far as to tell me that she was contemplating taking her own life because of Abood Al-Sawafi and Hamed Al-Hajri. If students are kicked off from their classes in Oman, which is supposed to be a rich country in the GCC bloc, what do we expect to see happening to our children and students elsewhere, especially in poor countries in Africa and Asia?

The fight against corruption is extremely difficult in Oman. This is why corruption has reached a very frightening level in all sectors, especially in higher education. This has also resulted in an increase in poverty in Oman. Even students in colleges and universities cannot afford to have one meal during their study hours at the college or university. You do not need to go too far to find the evidence that tells, without doubt, the truth of what we are saying here. Just go to my X Account (formerly Twitter Account) to find a video for Sheikh Kahlan Al Kharousi, the Deputy of the Grand Mufti of Oman. In this video, Sheikh Kahlan says that a large number of students at colleges and universities are too poor to afford even a simple meal during their day of study at the college or university. Where is the Government of Oman which always boasts of having achieved a large surplus of revenue for the National Budget? Where does the surplus go and your students go hungry in your colleges and universities? Where are the Ministry of Higher Education officials in Oman who spend most of the budget of the Ministry in trivial conferences and meetings and bonuses to the corrupt officials of the Ministry and some powerful and corrupt figures in private universities in Oman? Many officials in higher education like Abood Al-Sawafi and Saeed Al-Rubaii go on expensive, luxurious, and useless trips around the world at the expense of their institutions wasting the shareholders’ money as well as the public money. They take some members of the Board of Directors and Board of Trustees on these trips as a way of “bribing” them to keep them silent and to be complacent about their corruption. This has been happening in most colleges and universities in Oman.

Corruption always leads to the demoralization of organizations, whether military or civil. The soldiers were not prepared to fight and die for their corrupt commanders; the employees were not prepared to work hard and offer sacrifices for their corrupt managers. Corruption also leads many higher education graduates to think that the future is bleak as they cannot find jobs after graduation because of the widespread corruption in their country and that they spent many years in academic study and hard work in vain. So many of them may contemplate an easy way out of poverty and unemployment, especially when their families are too poor to assist them in setting up their own businesses.

This is exactly what has been happening in higher education in Oman because of the corruption of senior managers like Abood Al-Sawafi, Hamed Al-Hajri, Mohammed Al-Barashdi, and Saeed Al-Rubaii aggravated by the stunning dereliction of duty by the Board of Directors, the Board of Trustees, and the Ministry of Higher Education in Oman.

For more information and insights, read my article: " Suicide in the Middle East Part One: What Are the Real Problems?" (LinkedIn, May 21, 2024)