Student Counseling During Conflicts

Dr. Qais Ahmed Al-Muhammadi

Our students are our future, they are an active group of society categories and they represent the real stakeholders in all universities. During the conflict, the majority of students suffer from complex problems and extremely harsh conditions and they need comprehensive local and international empowerment to be implemented at the level of the country as a whole and exceed individual initiatives that may be implemented by a few Universities by providing emergency services to students ranging from the simplest by providing means of transportation to reach the classrooms to the most influential ones, such as covering their tuition fees for those affected by the disruption of salaries, student counseling academically, professionally and psychologically, as well as addressing low secondary school outputs, which have emerged more widely during the current years of conflict.

Academic student counseling aims to guide students to obtain the best results and adapt to the university environment by providing them with academic skills that raise their level of educational attainment. Whereas, vocational guidance means helping the individual to choose the specialty and the profession that suits him, and to prepare himself to work in it and achieve progress and career advancement and increase production as well as its quality level. It also includes helping students choose the type of study and profession that suits their talents, abilities, preferences and the needs of society, as well as enlightening them of available educational and professional opportunities and providing them with information and their admission requirements so that they could be able to determine their future.

We have to be aware that the student counseling process is characterized by continuity, and it is also a responsibility of all faculty members, not only the head of the Academic Support and Advising Unit (if any), but there is a role for the department to ensure the participation of all faculty members in the activities of academic and professional supervision of students to enhance their confidence In themselves and training them to take responsibility, and implant the spirit of positive participation in public life and the value of freedom in them.

It is imperative that student counseling include the functions of planning, coordination, and supervision of the implementation of the academic supervision process in universities, as follows:

Achieving student counseling, in cooperation with departments and faculty members, while ensuring the following rights:
- Access to vocational and academic guidance and counseling through the provision of services that will help them on their understanding of themselves and their problems, enabling them to exploit their potential own abilities together with skills and tendencies of preparations and taking into account the potential of their environment.
- Ensure that graduates are saturated with the theoretical aspect of education, and master the applied skills required in the labor market.
- Help them choose the right specialization
- Activating educational and entertainment activities.
- Obtaining information related to the curriculum, study schedules, study plan vocabulary, and account statement.
- Familiarizing them with their rights and duties and the regulations governing them (Student Affairs Regulations)
- The right of students to elect a student council or union.
- Access to psychological and social support.
Preparing the academic supervision plan that includes applicable programs, activities and indicators.
Ensuring that classrooms and laboratories are equipped with modern tools and techniques so that they are supportive of learning and teaching practices and devise new lesson plans and methodologies.
Supervising the study of students' conditions to identify deficiencies and faults, if any, finding out their causes, addressing them, and raising what is difficult to address to decision makers at the university.
Helping and supporting colleges and departments in the field of student counseling.
Follow up the implementation of student counseling programs' plans and mechanisms.

The wrong choice of specialization has personal and material dimensions for students and their parents on the one hand, and developmental dimensions at the level of the country as a whole on the other hand .. It limits their capabilities to bring about real changes in the field of their choice. This important issue clearly confronts us in our Yemeni society and has become a realistic issue, as many of us and our acquaintances either study in specializations that do not correspond to their preferences and abilities and work in a field other than what they studied as a result of the wrong choice of specialization and discover the error during the years of study or after graduation and other cases during the practice of work. Here, we need to enable the students and their parents to properly plan for choosing the specialization. Usually, the student is enabled to choose the appropriate specialization according to the priorities, criteria and factors that the following may be the most important of them:

The field he desires
His abilities which he possesses especially strong mentality and management
Availability and diversity of his skills
The support that he will receive from his relatives and acquaintances in the form of experience or relationships that facilitate him to go deeply on and practice the specialization
The scarcity and novelty of specialization versus the great need and the few specialists in it
Orientations of the state (government organizations and the private sector ..) in particular, and the global trends in general. Here, it will have to provide information bases on the labor market, and its future needs, to be accessible to students.

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Analysis That Matters.