EGYPT: Media students push for full-fledged colleges

Dozens of media students at the public Helwan University in southern Cairo have embarked on a strike. The main demand is for their department to be turned into a fully-fledged college of mass communication. Other universities have faced similar protests from media students, and have bowed to their requests.

"Students want an independent college," chanted the Helwan students, inspired by 18-day protests earlier this year that forced long-standing former president Hosni Mubarak to step down in February. "We are on a sit-in until we get a media college," read a banner.

The students appeared to have been emboldened by similar strikes reported at Ain Shams and Al Azhar universities, two major public institutions in Egypt. Apparently yielding to student pressure, both universities have agreed to convert their media departments into colleges.

"We are not inferior to media students at those two universities," said student Suheir Safwat.

Since Mubarak's ouster, Egyptian universities have been gripped by protests mainly calling for the removal of administrators and deans suspected of being loyal to the former regime.

"The university agrees in principle to creating a media college," said Mohamed el-Nashar, Deputy President of Helwan University. "Still, we will wait for a comprehensive study being conducted by the board of the college of arts," to which the media department is presently affiliated, he told the local press.

Officials at Al Azhar University, an Islamic seminary that teaches religious and secular disciplines to Muslim students only, have denied that their decision to turn the media department into a college was taken under pressure.

Abdel Sabour Fadel, head of the department, said the idea of establishing a media college had been discussed since the department's creation. "The aim of the college will be to reflect the moderate principles of Al Azhar, as the Muslim world's prestigious learning institution. It will also seek to correct the stereotypes of Muslims and Arabs worldwide."

The push to turn media departments into colleges has drawn mixed responses from the academic community.

"I see nothing wrong in converting these departments into independent colleges on condition they have enough qualified lecturers, sufficient facilities and proper places," said Mahmoud Khalil, a professor in the faculty of mass communication at Cairo University, Egypt's biggest public university.

However, Khalil expressed concern that media colleges and departments were being created without thorough studies of the media job market.

Supporting the conversion move, Aida el-Sakhawi, a professor of political media at the government-run Al Mansura University in Egypt's Delta, said that keeping media departments as part of colleges of arts reflected negatively on the quality of their graduates.

"This subordination means that these departments remains poorly funded and equipped. If the departments become colleges without increasing the numbers of students attending them while augmenting their resources, their curricula and teaching methods will be properly developed," she argued.

"Thus, they will groom efficient graduates in different fields of media. At the end of the day, Egypt will get media graduates qualified enough to replace those who entered the profession thanks to favoritism and nepotism."