Ticket to a place

As tens of thousands of high school graduates ready their bids for university placements, Alaa Shahine maps the bumps and hurdles of Egypt's enrolment system
It's a war-zone at the Enrolment Coordination Office (ECO) headquarters in Cairo University's student hostels, where students queue up for their ration of higher education. In this maze of makeshift offices -- along with the ECO's eight other branches distributed nationwide -- the future of an approximate quarter of a million high school graduates is decided.
This is the peak season for the ECO, the authority charged with finding a place in Egypt's already packed universities or other institutes of higher learning for every high school graduate. Over 200,000 students have already been placed in universities nationwide -- even though many will not find a job that corresponds to their education after graduation.
"The government enrols so many students mainly because the prevailing trend in Egyptian society is that a university education is a prerequisite for a decent social life," Hamid Taher, vice-president of Cairo University told Al-Ahram Weekly. Although the reality of the job market is known to all, the quest for the prestige of a top-faculty education is incentive enough to keep students and their parents baking in the heat while they grapple with the complicated procedures of university placement.
Students are classified on the basis of their thanawiyya amma exam scores (the general secondary education certificate), which restricts the faculties to which they can apply. Each student buys an LE30 package, which contains several application forms and a guide book listing the names and locations of all of the available schools nationwide. These applications are sent by the ECO office to the universities' computer centre, which sorts students according to the minimum admission score set for each school by the Supreme Council of Universities.
Students with a grade over 92.62 per cent in the sciences and over 78.87 per cent in literature and humanities have already been processed. The rest are still being distributed among universities and other institutes of higher learning. But students complain that nothing about the process is straightforward. "I got 95.2 per cent in literature and humanities and yet I must write down the names of 48 faculties that I wish to join in order of priority," complained Sarah Zaher, who was busy filling out her forms. In her confusion, Zaher included the Athletics Institute, only to find out later that it is restricted to male students. Despite Zaher's top grades, she is still not sure whether she will be allowed to join the faculty of her choice -- mass communications -- because of the complexity of the minimum score system.
"The whole system is a total failure," declared Medhat Rabie, a professor at the Faculty of Language and Translation at Al- Azhar University. "The final grade of the exam is not a valid criteria to judge the student's real capabilities," he told the Weekly. "I know a student who got 95 per cent in the thanawiyya amma, only to fail in the faculty of engineering because it was not a good choice for him and nobody was there to advise him." Rabie, a former professor at the University of Texas, explained that "In the United States, for example, students have counselors at both high schools and universities to discuss the most suitable major based on the student's capabilities," he said. "Further, students are required to take aptitude tests before joining the school of their choice."
But the Ministry of Higher Education is adamant that this system could never be applied fairly in Egypt (See related interview). According to Cairo University's Hamid, application tests would feed a culture of nepotism. "It will be another struggle between the haves and the have-nots, which will end up in favour of the former," he said.
But Abdel-Aziz Hammouda, vice-president of the private University for Science and Technology and a former US Egyptian cultural counsellor, suggests, an emphasis on placement and numbers is misguided. "The whole educational philosophy is wrong. What they are doing is just stuffing students' minds with facts and information."
In spite of their opposing stances regarding the enrolment system, both Taher and Rabie have suggested the same solution: raising universities' tuition fees. "University education should not be free. As things stand today, it is not free anyway, when you consider how much each family pays for private lessons and books," Rabie said. "At the same time, excellent students should be granted scholarships to guarantee equal opportunities. It is meaningless that under the current system a leading student is treated on equal footing with another student who has been failing for several years, but still enjoys his 'almost-free' university seat."
Taher agrees. "We can't keep burying our heads in the sand. I know it is difficult to implement this idea, but we will have to face the prospect of paid schooling in the not-too- distant future."
The key philosophy behind the drive to institute tuition fees is the belief that the value of high school education and vocational training needs to be raised. The Enrolment Coordination Office is swamped every year by many students who seek a university degree only because it is considered necessary. "In the developed nations, a high school graduate can start his life and find job opportunities," claims Rabie. "We should start planting this notion in the Egyptian society."
The argument begs the question of jobs, however. University graduates continue to enjoy greater access to employment opportunities, let alone a considerably higher social status. So long as this situation continues, the scramble for university placements will go on.
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