EQYPT: Law tightens government control

A new civil universities law approved late last year by the Shura Council, the Egyptian parliament's upper house, is set to tighten the government's grip on higher education. The law provides for the creation of 17 new non-profit universities and makes the Ministry of Higher Education responsible for appointing half the institutions' boards of directors. The other half will be left up to the universities' founders and investors to select.


"This law should be thoroughly reviewed and debated as part of an ambitious education policy before approval," said Abdel Salam Abdel Ghafar, an ex-Minister of Education. "It should by all means avoid infringing on the independence of universities."

Ghafar warned that creating more fee-paying universities in the country of 80 million people was bound to reflect negatively on the status of public universities. Egypt already has 18 public and 16 private universities and Ghafar said they were in need of "more attention from the government.

Under the universities law, which has yet to be ratified by the parliament's lower house, the Ministry of Higher Education will have to set up special funding projects to accommodate the new universities.

The bill is widely expected to have a smooth passage through the lower house which is dominated by the ruling National Democratic Party of President Hosni Mubarak. The house education committee has already approved the bill "in principle".

"Education experts, who tried to express opposing views during a meeting of the committee, were ignored by the Minister of Higher Education who left the meeting," said Islamist MP Ali Laban. "The bill was endorsed in the upper house because the ruling party has a vast majority there. This will also happen in the lower house when the bill is debated," Laban told University World News.

Zaki el-Saadani, head of the higher education department in the Opposition newspaper Al Wafd, said: "I think the so-called civil universities law is defective because it gives the government wide powers similar to those it has in running the financial and administrative affairs of public universities.

"The main aim of the new universities is to give the government the pretext to manipulate these universities to collect money and introduce fee-paying education," el-Saadani added. Under the Egyptian constitution, education is free in public schools and universities.

"I hope that the civil universities will really be non-profit and follow the example of Cairo University [Egypt's biggest public university], which was created in 1908 as a private institution and became public in 1925," he said.

Officials in private universities are not optimistic either. "The governmental Higher Council for Private and Civil Universities is one of the main obstacles to higher education," said Mohamed Ragab, heads of the board of trustees of Pharos University, a private institution outside Cairo.

Presidents of all universities in Egypt, whether public or private, cannot make decisions without approval of the council, whose members are appointed by the Ministry of Higher Education. "This means decisions are delayed for long months," Ragab explained.

Denying accusations that the government aims to control civil universities, Higher Education Minister Hani Helal said his ministry's role would be merely supervisory. "The creation of the civil universities is part of plans to develop higher education in Egypt. They introduce a new quality type of education," he said in press remarks. "Independence of these universities is safeguarded and our role will be regulatory."