The American University in Cairo (AUC) celebrated on Thursday receiving the reaffirmation of its accreditation by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE). As the only University in Egypt and one of the only four universities accredited in the Middle East, the celebration was attended by the Minister of Education Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, NAQAEE President You Hansen Eid, and AUC President Francis Ricciardone, along with several other professors and presidents of Egypt's various governmental and private universities. The AUC received the top level of MSCHE's reaffirmation of accreditation, without any requirements. "The AUC is considered an extremely successful part of the educational system in Egypt," Abdel Ghaffar stated adding, "it has provided a unique education service to students, and it's currently the only globally accredited university in Egypt." He elaborated further, "When we want to highlight the quality of education in Egypt to our foreign visitors, we invite them to visit the AUC given the significance of its international accreditations." The accreditation comes along with the AUC's centennial anniversary celebration. As for Ricciardone, he described the accreditation as "vitally important" for the AUC administration. "Without this quality assurance to our students, parents, and ourselves that we are meeting the international standards in our mission, we couldn't be in business," Ricciardone told Daily News Egypt. "Our competition is global, so we need some way of knowing that we are meeting those standards, which the accreditation gives us," he explained. He asserted that through this accreditation, the AUC guarantees that the final years of preparing students to adulthood are fully taken advantage of, through providing them with the best educational service, which allows them to be employed anywhere in the world. According to a press release published by the AUC, MSCHE is one of seven United States (US)-based regional accreditors which certify entire institutions, not individual programmes, units, or locations. It is an institutional accrediting agency, recognized by the US Secretary of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. The AUC's Chief Strategy and Institutional Effectiveness Officer Iman Megahed, stated in a press release that "the reaffirmation process has laid out our path, as we move into the future, to ensure that we continue to uphold the standards of excellence, and continuously improve and become an even greater institution. Every member of the AUC community can feel a genuine sense of pride that they belong to and contribute to the well-being and advancement of this university.”
