News Desk
The former Vice Chancellor of the Maldives National University has raised concern about the proportion of secondary school students choosing business over science, saying the imbalance is a warning sign for a country that already struggles with corruption and lacks technical skills.
Dr Hassan Hameed posted on X sharing RTI data obtained from the Ministry of Education showing that of students who sat A-level examinations in 2025, 49 percent were in the business stream, 50 percent in science, and just one percent in arts. In raw numbers, 8,957 students sat science subjects including biology, chemistry and physics, while 7,017 sat business subjects including business studies, accounting and economics. Only 58 students sat arts subjects.
Dr Hassan said that in countries like the United Kingdom and Singapore, the proportion of students studying business is below 20 percent. He suggested the high figure in the Maldives was not simply a matter of student preference.
“Some will say that the corruption now widespread in the country is a consequence of this figure once reaching 80 percent in the past,” he wrote. “Does this proportion concern you?”
The Minister of Education had also recently expressed concern about the declining number of students pursuing engineering, a field the country depends on almost entirely on expatriate workers to fill.
The data does not break down how many of the business stream students go on to higher education in the same field, but the pattern at secondary level reflects what universities report: business and management remain by far the most popular degree choices among Maldivian students, while engineering, medicine and technical disciplines attract far fewer.
