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higher thinking

a fresh batch of private universities is slated to open later this year. can the market support the new additions? more importantly, what will it take for private universities to forge a distinct, marketable identity?

by frederik richter

for abdallah barakat, private universities in egypt are still in their infancy. “they’re still new, so we have to take care of them,” says barakat, chairman of the supreme council for higher education and the former chairman of the state body that regulates private universities. “until now, the government is backing them and giving them everything they need.”

it’s the type of reassurance any nascent sector wants to hear. until 1996, the american university in cairo (auc) was egypt’s sole private university. however, a presidential decree passed in 1996 established four other private universities – misr international university, sixth of october university, the university of modern sciences and arts, and misr university for sciences and technology – to operate under egypt’s private university law 101 of 1992.

the law outlined the creation of the supreme council for private universities (scpu), a state body entrusted to regulate and supervise the activities of all private universities in egypt except the american university in cairo, which was established in 1919 and is still governed by the agreement between the egyptian and the us governments under which it was created. scpu determines the number of students each private university can accept, which varies from year to year depending on market demand. it also sets the minimum entry grade for each specialization as well as granting final approval for university curricula.

the universities themselves have the right to establish new faculties, choose their president and staff, and determine annual fees. each university is also required to draft its own curricula according to scpu guidelines and subject to the council’s final approval.

today, some 35,000 students attend egypt’s six private universities – the four created via presidential decree in 1996 plus the french university of egypt (ufe) and the german university in cairo (guc), which were established less than two years ago. this is in addition to approximately 10,000 students who attend auc and the arab academy for science, technology & maritime transport. three more private universities – the british university in egypt (bue), al-ahram canadian university and nile university – are scheduled to open this fall with no less than 16 other applications currently under review by the ministry of higher education. the rapid growth of private universities begs the question, can the market support that many higher education institutes?
tim sullivan, provost of the american university in cairo, explains that the upsurge in the number of private universities is simply the trend of the day. to illustrate his point, he draws an analogy to the boom in shopping malls over the past five years. “in recent years, cairo has seen a [surge] in the number of new shopping malls. they usually open with great fanfare, but the truth is that not all of them make it.” sullivan says the same applies to private universities. “there is clearly a market, but sorting it out is going to take some time.”

while private universities account for just 2 percent of the egyptian education market, it’s the most lucrative piece of the pie. universities remain tight-lipped about their finances, but total revenue figures for private universities are said to hover around $130 million per year. in fy 2003-04, auc alone earned an estimated $50 million. moreover, private universities benefit from private and international donors, pushing their revenue figure as high as $200 million.

by contrast, the government sinks $1 billion per year into the public higher education system, shelling out about £e 4,000 for each of the country’s 1.5 million students, plus an undisclosed amount for the 700,000 students enrolled in technical institutes. all this is done under the banner of a free public education, but one shouldn’t let appearances fool them. public education is no bargain.

students fork out considerable sums for course materials – often to purchase copies of outdated textbooks that professors sell from their own stock to supplement their meager incomes. in addition, some departments in public universities, such as foreign language departments at cairo university, charge considerable “inscription fees” ranging from £e 2,000 to £e 4,000 a year.

the poor education quality of state universities – characterized by overcrowded classrooms, a dearth of teaching resources and oft-truant professors – has prompted parents to spend inordinate amounts of money on private tutoring. a european source estimates that private tutoring for a freshman student can range from £e 5,000 to £e 10,000 a year depending on the college, with the price doubling for sessions where the tutor gives students drafts of the final exam.

the poor quality of public education coupled with its rising cost has allowed private universities to create a niche for themselves in the market. but filling this niche comes with its own set of constraints. initially heralded as a fresh alternative to old-man public university, who aged without ever becoming wiser, private universities claim government intervention has kept them inexorably bound to the state education system.

quality control
while private universities may boast smaller student-professor ratios, better technical equipment and more international cooperation, their teaching techniques remain too similar to those of public universities for comfort. private universities are very aware that in order to rise above their competitors, both private and public, the quality of teaching will have to improve. “after nine years, private universities still don’t have their own staff,” notes barakat. “they are depending completely on the staff of the public universities.”

he explains that only 2 percent of staff at private universities is permanent while a whopping 40 percent is “borrowed” from public universities on a contract basis and the remainder is part-time staff from public universities that spend part of their week teaching elsewhere. it’s a temporary arrangement that saves them a lot of money by drawing from the same underpaid labor pool as egypt’s state universities. but it also means private university staff share the same qualifications as their public university counterparts – which may explain why a number of professors lack basic foreign language skills, even in departments that require it. more importantly, many continue to depend on outdated teaching techniques, which bring the overall quality of paid private education to the same level as that offered in free public universities.

“the permanent staff here is too small,” concurs aly talaat, dean of the faculty of engineering at sixth of october university, the largest of the four universities founded in 1996. he notes, however, that the university is very selective in choosing professors, firing those whose performance is deemed unsatisfactory. the attrition rate is around 25 to 30 percent, down from 40 percent during the university’s early years, he adds.

some universities – such as guc, ufe or, more recently, al-ahram canadian university – are attempting to strengthen their credibility and marketability by associating themselves with an international counterpart. some of these universities invite foreign professors to guest lecture. others are trying to get them on staff.

alexander haridi, head of the german academic exchange (daad) office in cairo, sees the trend of internationalization as an admission of the failure of private universities to stand on their own two feet. “my personal interpretation is that this is a confession of the failure of local universities: foreigners are supposed to arrange what egyptians are not able to do by themselves,” he says in harsh criticism of the shape of the egyptian higher education system.

but it’s not just the quality of the staff, say academic experts, it’s the quality of the students that counts. “at least 50 percent of the quality of a university depends on the quality of its students,” asserts haridi. he notes that private universities with international staff such as guc are disenchanted with the quality of students admitted. academic standards were downwardly adjusted over the first three semesters to match the level of local high school graduates.

“honestly, it is hard to teach the students any kind of curriculum be it better or worse than that of public universities because many of the students aren’t actually interested in getting an education,” complained one part-time staffer at sixth of october university. “at least students at public universities want to finish school because they don’t want to burden their families, but students here know that their families can afford to pay the fees so they come here for fun.”
university administrators say their hands are tied. unlike most countries, egypt does not permit universities to independently screen their students for acceptance into specific colleges. instead, placement after high school is determined based on the government administered thanawiya amma (high school final exam). the actual college or specialization a student is accepted into is based on their grade point average in this one exam. selectivity is close to zero. students who score 96 percent or more are eligible for entry into medical school; students with lower grades are usually doled off to arts colleges. it was a scheme designed to determine college entry in a free education system where grades were seen as the sole indicator of talent.

upon deciding to establish private universities, the government insisted on applying the same rigid thanawiya amma system to the new institutions. the scpu has fixed an admission percentage slightly below that of state universities, which private institutions complain provides them with students who are “not as smart” as those enrolled in their public counterparts and keeps the quality of their education low. ironically, the new private institutions also complain that the government doesn’t allow them to operate on the minimum 55 percent exam score afforded by the law. while accepting students with lower thanawiya amma scores may water down the quality of students, in practice it has helped private universities carve out a market niche for themselves.

while some would say that government restrictions translate into weaker students, the universities can go their own way if they so choose. while the government sets the minimum grade score for students to apply for a specific college, the government doesn’t force the universities to accept these students, nor does it prevent them recruiting and accepting students with thanawiya amma results above the minimum threshold.

cairo university’s veteran law professor fouad abdel moneim riyad argues that the government should force private universities to create better selection criteria to improve the level of graduates. “we have to realize that those universities only choose students according to their ability to pay tuition,” he notes. “so you will find students with 75 percent in thanawiya amma studying medicine while their counterparts in public universities are required to have at least 96 percent. the only difference is that the parents of one student can afford to pay while those of the others can’t.”

dollars & degrees
those who establish private universities are in the market for more than just the academic excellence of the graduates. establishing a university is very expensive and investors have to keep profits in mind when selecting students as well as curricula.

in fact, guc’s german faculty was stunned when students who failed their exams in prerequisite courses moved to the next level of classes without having to repeat their courses. this reportedly resulted from a conscious decision made by the university in order to keep the money flowing. simply put, investors calculate success or failure based on numbers and fees, and not necessarily the quality of the education. losing a student because he or she fails an exam would also mean losing money.

this cost awareness is also the main reason why most private universities offer the same programs as their public counterparts – basics such as medicine, pharmacology, engineering and commerce.

yet, as auc’s sullivan points out, private universities have the right to design and offer their own specializations. “[in this case], they would essentially be offering something to people that they can’t get elsewhere.”

sullivan hints to the fact that private universities gravitate towards offering mainstream subjects deemed prestigious by egyptian society. instead, he suggests that by offering unique programs such private universities would become a bigger asset to egyptian society as a whole. the problem, he admits, is that there is no guarantee that egyptian students are willing to enroll in such alternative programs.

while some universities do offer a couple of unique programs, such as the specialization in mechatronics offered by sixth of october university’s faculty of engineering or the bio-technology and materials sciences program offered at guc, innovative curricula remain the exception rather than the rule. youssef al tanbari, professor of medicine at zaqaziq university, says the handful of new programs offered by private universities is simply not enough. “we have not seen any private university teaching sea or desert sciences for instance, or environmental or even human rights studies.”

certainly, designing their own unique programs would give private universities a greater hand in their own affairs. according to barakat, when private universities offer specializations already available in public universities, they can only create 20 to 30 percent of the curricula themselves.

since they are offering specializations offered by public universities, the government regulates these programs with a much heavier hand.

haridi says the balance between the desire of investors to recover their investment and academics seeking to ensure that the quality of education differs from one university to another. some universities are founded by businessmen with history in the field of education, while others are, quite frankly, in it simply for the money. for example, sixth of october university was founded by sayed tonsi mahmoud, who already had several academic and training institutions. the same applies for misr international university, owned by the rashidi family, which gained a sterling reputation for running several private schools.

scraps of paper
complaints about students, professors and curricula aside, private university graduates initially had a much bigger problem – their degrees were not accredited by egyptian professional syndicates, and as a result, some employers would not hire them. this was particularly problematic for graduates of medicine, pharmacology and engineering, who need syndicate accreditation to secure employment in the profession.

until recently, private universities did not provide their graduates with the necessary paperwork to become part of the syndicates, even if they completed the same credits as graduates of public universities. this led to conflicts between the universities and several professional syndicates, which were in many cases linked to the most powerful faculties of public universities. after almost a decade, the higher administrative court ruled last year that the syndicates must accredit graduates of private universities. after all, the court noted, their programs were approved and monitored by the egyptian government.

while some students have sought local accreditation of their degrees, others had a vested interest in securing international recognition. for those students, universities with international affiliations have the greatest appeal. “international” universities such as auc, ufe and guc have played this card to lure students, but a degree from one of these institutions is not necessarily an entry ticket to foreign institutions. the newly established guc, for instance, claims that students can easily move on to its german partner universities, but in practice, the students still need to complete each partner university’s entry tests.

private universities have also had the occasional squabble with the government. not too long ago, misr international university for science and technology filed a court case against the ministry of higher education after the ministry accused the university of accepting more students than the number allotted to it by the scpu. eventually, the courts sided with the university, suggesting that the rules that regulate the relationship between private universities and the government are still fluid.

hosni ismail, former vice chairman of ain shams university and currently an scpu member, regrets that universities and the government see one another as adversaries and not partners. “part of the problem is that the private universities see the ministry of higher education as an enemy,” he says. “every time they have a dispute over something the universities run to the court and spend months there so at the end all the efforts of the two sides are being put in the court hall and not on improving the level of education or the services given to students.”

in spite of the challenges that private universities in egypt still face, the education model is still very much in its infancy, which means that there’s plenty of room to grow. with almost a third of the egyptian population under the age of 30, there will be no shortage of demand for high-quality secondary education. and while private universities still have their work cut out to become fully integrated into the egyptian education system, there seems to be no shortage of people willing to invest their money into establishing them. the battles that the universities wage today will likely pay dividends in the future.

but ultimately, the future of private universities will depend on the success of their graduates. as auc’s sullivan, the provost of the oldest private university in the country, points out, it’s not about the number of students that enroll or even the number that graduate. what it boils down to is the quality of people that graduate from these schools and the kinds of employment opportunities they find. “it will not be about did you get your first job? it’s about did you keep it? and did you get your next job and did you move up?”

additional reporting by summer said

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