CAIRO - Even if schoolchildren do badly in their final exams, there's still a place waiting for them at the private universities, which only require a lot of money, not high marks. Some of the faculties at these universities charge their students as much as LE50,000 (about $8,500) per annum. Although professors at the private universities disagree about how to reform education in these educational institutions, they do agree that it is important to re-evaluate the way they operate. Egypt has had private universities since 1996, when four republican decrees were issued for the establishment of four private universities: 6th October University for Modern Sciences and Arts, Misr University for Science and Technology, Misr International University and 6th October University. These universities were followed by the French and German universities, and Al-Ahram Canadian University, in addition to the British University. Over the past 15 years, these universities have caused several problems for students, affecting their educational standard. The biggest reason for this is that they have become businesses, only benefiting businessmen and members of staff. Their engineering and medicine schools also welcome students whose marks aren't high enough for admittance to these schools in governmental universities. The result is that doctors and engineers who have studied at private universities are mediocre. Professors agree that financial goals should be secondary when establishing a private university, so as to guarantee high-quality education for the students. They describe the private universities, as they are at present, as time bombs. These universities are only interested in money: if their students pay enough, they pass their exams. The professors are also critical of the fact that deans of faculties are chosen according to their ability to make undergraduates pay money, as they told Al-Shorouq independent newspaper, while the principals of these universities are all-powerful, something which endangers the educational process. They also want the Ministry of Higher Education to set up boards of directors for these private universities, in order to end their personal supervision by their owners. Abdullah Sorour, a member of the March 9 Movement, formed in 2004 with a mandate to press for the independence of Egypt's universities from daily security and governmental intervention, describes the situation of the above universities as dire. Sorour would like a new, precise system swiftly introduced for the management and administration of these universities, so they don't run according to the whim of those in charge. Dr Tareq el-Dessouqi, a professor of paediatrics at el-Mansoura University (a public-sector educational institution in the Nile Delta) agrees, adding that tough procedures should be taken against those universities where the management isn't serious about education. He believes that the whole issue of granting licences for establishing private universities needs reconsideration, while we need more high-quality, public-sector universities. "Just look at a country like Iran, which has 400 governmental universities, while Egypt has only 17. This is why educational standards here are slipping. "The 17 public-sector universities we have at present aren't enough for all the students who want to enrol," adds professor el-Dessouqi.
