Demographics of Sudanese University Students in Relation to Regional Conflict and Underdevelopment

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper presents an interesting and relevant research topic as it examines the context of Higher Education in a developing country such as Sudan. It describes the regional differences in higher education in Sudan. The paper aims to evaluate the extent to which the educational situation reflects the development situation and tries to formulate data-driven educational policies that may address conflict situations and development inequities.

General comments:

Abstract and keywords are missing.

Introduction section should include some information before section 1.1. or the title of section 1.1. should be removed.

Section 1.2. “Regions of Sudan” should be a single section. It is too long – 8 pages extension. A different outline and organization of the information should be thought. The characterization of the regional differences in Sudan, especially with reference to conflict and development level, needs to be made more clear and brief in this section.

This sentence is very confusing: “This research focuses on Sudanese university application and admissions data for regional characteristics of college Student Demographics in Sudan it is statistical study of admissions Data for students for the academic years 2015-16 and 2016-17” (line 340-342). It is important to understand the focus of the study.

The research questions are interesting and well formulated. They should guide the discussion and conclusion section.

The discussion section is too short and lacks coherence. The content is presented in a loose way, without connection between paragraphs and ideas. The discussion requires a deep and sound analysis of the main achievements with the results and the literature review. Authors should seek to answer the research questions defined in the methodology section.

The conclusions section needs revision. The first line (line 525-526) seems incomplete. The start of line 527  and 529 are missing something.

English writing needs deep improvements.

The authors should remove all the information that belongs to the template of the instructions for authors (see page 1 and 22).

Author Response

The reviewers’ original comments are in regular case. Authors’ responses are in italics.

We offer our deep and sincere apologies to the reviewer for the first version that was sent.  We submitted the document from Overleaf, and the text was seriously corrupted by the submission process. We neglected to check the .zip file before sending it  to the editor. Most of the reviewer’s comments addressed defects that were introduced by faulty processing. Below we respond point by point.

Abstract and keywords are missing.

These were corrupted in the original submission. They have been corrected.

Introduction section should include some information before section 1.1. or the title of section 1.1. should be removed.

We have put some introductory text before all titles.

Section 1.2. “Regions of Sudan” should be a single section. It is too long – 8 pages extension. A different outline and organization of the information should be thought. The characterization of the regional differences in Sudan, especially with reference to conflict and development level, needs to be made more clear and brief in this section.

 Thanks for this suggestion. We have created a separate “Background” section that describes the regions of Sudan, as well as the educational system. 

This sentence is very confusing: “This research focuses on Sudanese university application and admissions data for regional characteristics of college Student Demographics in Sudan it is statistical study of admissions Data for students for the academic years 2015-16 and 2016-17” (line 340-342). It is important to understand the focus of the study.

This sentence was corrupted in the first submission.  It is correct in the current version.

 The research questions are interesting and well formulated. They should guide the discussion and conclusion section.

Addressed in corrected version

The discussion section is too short and lacks coherence. The content is presented in a loose way, without connection between paragraphs and ideas. The discussion requires a deep and sound analysis of the main achievements with the results and the literature review. Authors should seek to answer the research questions defined in the methodology section.

Addressed in corrected version.

The conclusions section needs revision. The first line (line 525-526) seems incomplete. The start of line 527  and 529 are missing something.

Addressed in corrected version.

English writing needs deep improvements.

Addressed in corrected version.

The authors should remove all the information that belongs to the template of the instructions for authors (see page 1 and 22).

Our apologies. Material has been removed.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for the opportunity to review the article "Regional Demographics of Sudanese College Students, and their Relation to Regional Conflict and
Underdevelopment". The theme under study is very important and the article has merit, but I have some concerns and suggestions regarding the improvement of the article:

Abstract: the abstract is a paraghaph wit one pharse, it needs to be rewritten.
Introduction: You need to put in relevance the potential gap in the literature that justifies your study and show clearly the innovation and the contribution of your study for theory and practice. It also needs the roadmap for the article.

Methods: What are the methods applied in your research? You need to make this explicit. The methodology needs a more sustained explanation and to be supported on references. I think this section need a lot of work, I suggest you identify and describe the scientific methods used not only the statistical techniques applied.

From where emerge the research questions and its problematization? They should emerge from the literature.

Analysis: The tables and graphs need to be better explained, and explicitly the main findings.

Discussion and conclusions are very poor sections, you need to rewritten both the discussion and the conclusions based on the findings and on the theory.

Author Response

We offer our deep and sincere apologies to the reviewer for the first version that was sent.  We submitted the document from Overleaf, and the text was seriously corrupted by the submission process. We neglected to check the .zip file before sending it  to the editor. Most of the reviewer’s comments addressed defects that were introduced by faulty processing. Below we respond point by point.  The reviewer’s comments are in regular case, on our responses are in italics.

Abstract: the abstract is a paraghaph wit one pharse, it needs to be rewritten.
This was corrupted in the original submission.  The correct abstract has been restored..

Introduction: You need to put in relevance the potential gap in the literature that justifies your study and show clearly the innovation and the contribution of your study for theory and practice. It also needs the roadmap for the article.

In the Introduction, we have added a review of studies dealing with the relationships between development and higher education, and between conflict and higher education. We have also explained that our study is data-driven, and  until recently systematic data for Sudan was unavailable (lines79-80). We have clarified the practical contribution of the study (lines 77-79), which are summarized in the conclusion as well as the abstract (lines 14-19). We have reorganized the introduction to include a roadmap (lines 106-112).

Methods: What are the methods applied in your research? You need to make this explicit. The methodology needs a more sustained explanation and to be supported on references. I think this section need a lot of work, I suggest you identify and describe the scientific methods used not only the statistical techniques applied.

IWe are using standard, quantitative methods based on statistical analysis. This is very clear from the nature of the study, and should not require additional explanation. Our particular emphasis  on methods of graphical analysis (which falls within the realm of statistical analysis) is explained in Section 3.3.

From where emerge the research questions and its problematization? They should emerge from the literature.

The research questions and problematization are motivated by and  logically derived from the practical situation being addressed, which was explained in the introduction (Section 1.2).

Analysis: The tables and graphs need to be better explained, and explicitly the main findings.

We have provided a section explaining how to interpret the graphs in general. In addition, each graph in the document is introduced by explanatory text, and important features are noted.  

Discussion and conclusions are very poor sections, you need to rewritten both the discussion and the conclusions based on the findings and on the theory.

Our apologies, these sections were seriously corrupted in the version that you reviewed. They have been corrected in the current submission.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper may be accepted in the present form.

The reference section will be checked by the journal's editorial office.

Author Response

We are very grateful for your valuable comments.

We have made some small changes in the Materials and methods section, at the request of the other reviewer.

• An introductory sentence was added before Section 3.1
• The research questions were introduced with a paragraph.
• Source data and preprocessing subsections were combined into a single subsection.

Besides this, we have put in-text citations before periods in accordance with MDPI style.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for your explanations and revised version.

I have a final comment: the research questions emerged from the practice, but need to be supported in theory. So I ask you to frame the research questions theoretically. 

Author Response

We are very grateful for your valuable comments. We have made changes in the Materials and methods section:

• An introductory sentence was added before Section 3.1
• The research questions were introduced with a paragraph.
• Source data and preprocessing subsections were combined into a single subsection.

Besides this, we have put in-text citations before periods in accordance with MDPI style.