First industry, then the banks, later health and now education. Faten Morsy* decries the commodification of learning Egypt has been witnessing a radical economic and social restructuring for more than a decade now. We have seen the removal of state subsidies and the selling of state assets with massive redundancies in several sectors as a result. The aim (ostensibly) has always been to improve efficiency and ensure better quality production. Business elites and treasury officials have been strenuously pushing for the state to be removed from people's lives. The privatisation process seems to be entering its final phases, and the restructuring of the core public sector, health and education, have now become priority areas for further "marketisation". Last month the Ministry of Higher Education published a number of proposed amendments to the present higher education law, describing them as constituting "a vision". Such proposals, though, are part of a strategy of using reform to cover cutbacks in state expenditure in the vital education sector. The fundamental changes proposed in this "vision" seem to be the work of a handful of self-interested administrators, maybe well-intentioned but definitely serving the interests of an elite that seeks to replicate global economic models regardless of their social consequences. They comprise a minority in academia, opposed by a majority of faculty members, students and parents for whom the proposed changes, if applied, will prove disastrous. This process of commodification -- or marketisation, as it were -- of our higher education institutions is well under way. The "boom" in private universities together with the emergence of "paid programmes" in existing public or national universities are proof of a policy that seeks to push students into paying the costs of their chosen programmes of study. This philosophy of "user pays" is now to become the order of the day in higher education. The newly-published "vision" states it clearly: "Academic and educational institutions provide educational, academic and research services" and "the relationship between the student and the educational institution is that of a user and provider of a service" (italics mine). According to this new vision students are redefined as "consumers" and higher education institutions as "providers" of a service. They even talk of "inputs" and "outputs" in the educational system. Any notion of the educational process in the service of collective public good has all but disappeared. Moreover, there is not a single reference in the 10 pages of published proposals to "learning", "knowledge" or "teaching", which, linguistically speaking, belong to the lexical field of "education". Furthermore, since students pay for the services they are offered, then it is only natural that they expect good value for their self-interested investment. If the services they purchase do not measure up to expectations, "providers" can be threatened for their failure to "deliver". Higher education, in short, is becoming a "commodity", something to be produced, packaged, sold and consumed. Another crucial element in this process of commodification is the logic of performance testing, a stress on quality assurance and high performance expectations from professors or faculty members. Such business practices are clearly reflected in the "package of reforms" introduced into Egyptian universities more than a year ago. I am referring here to the host of training programmes that entire faculties are herded into attending, in the name of enhancing and reforming their performance the Higher Education Enhancement Project Fund (HEEPF), the Quality Assurance and Accreditation Project (QAAP) and the Information and Communication Technology Project (ICTP) are a few examples. Apart from the fact that such training programmes have become part of a cumbersome bureaucratic body consuming time and money, these seemingly benign initiatives constitute a threat to faculty autonomy as professors are left feeling ever more alienated from their original context, ie the actual teaching process. Hundreds of staff members who have attended such training programmes expressed their disappointment at the fact that they were misled by the titles of programmes that all professed quality teaching as their goal while utterly ignoring dire working conditions, let alone seeking solutions to the problems they engender. The dismay of the bulk of our "trainee" professors stems from the discrepancy they find between expectations and reality, hence their cynicism toward the entire training programmes. It is noteworthy that in the new vision there is a stress on performance indicators as evidence of success or failure. No one can lose sight of the fact that the proposed vision is clearly inspired by forms of technocratic or managerial practices. Such practices may well be pertinent to the needs of industry and/or business-like processes, but the question remains: are they appropriate when it comes to education? Accepting the dire state of national universities and the need for radical changes to the system of higher education in Egypt, I believe the direction of the reform should take a different path. A counter vision to the one proposed is needed if our universities are to be saved from the imminent "deluge"; quality, qualification and constant assessment essential to any resurgence of our higher education system. Such developments should be knowledge-based as well as institutionally generated. Staff development should be a continuous process undertaken by faculty members themselves and in their respective specialisations. As they become the last line of defence against the wholesale commercialisation of academia, university professors must defend their raison d'être as vital participants in the educational process rather than mere trainers or service deliverers. By the same token, there is a need to reaffirm the educational ideal of self-knowledge as an ultimate aim of higher education. This in turn entails treating students as "seekers of knowledge"; they must be encouraged to question, criticise and become aware of alternatives rather than be treated as skilled trainees or users of a service. More than 60 years ago Taha Hussein saw education as the sole means to a prosperous and socially just Egypt. This vision was the soul of the educational reform programme that he expounded in The Future of Culture in Egypt (1944). Hussein's words could not be more at odds with the present day proposals: "In this beautiful dream of mine I see Egypt responding to my plea for ever greater efforts to banish ignorance from her midst and provide everyone -- rich and poor, strong and weak, keen and dull, young and old -- with his portion of knowledge. The delights of learning will permeate their soul and its light will illuminate every dwelling, from castle to hovel." ( The Future of Culture in Egypt, trans. Sidney Glazer, The Palm Press: Cairo, 1998, p.161). In an (ostensibly) democratic move, the Ministry of Higher Education has offered its contemporary "vision" for debate in our universities and among university staff members before presenting it for ratification to the People's Assembly. The debate has started in efforts to prevent the entrenchment of the new law in academia. But will there be a response? Our experience as professors has been that the higher educational bureaucratic system is unresponsive, bulky and sometimes even hostile to demands for reform or independence. Will the debate prove that the enthusiasts of the new vision are genuine in their democratic claims that the subject is open to revision according to the viewpoints of the parties involved, ie the teaching staff, the students and the parents? Or will the implementation of the proposed amendments prove yet again that the system represents an oligarchy in which the power elite will determine all aspects of our life as they seek to dominate even our higher education system? * The writer is a professor of English and comparative literature at Ain Shams University.
