Until the 1950s, the law schools in Egypt were the elitist schools whose graduates used to hold prominent posts, including governmental portfolios and diplomatic positions. Later, the law schools, now numbering 15, experienced a reversal in their fortunes, and these days these institutions are bursting at the seams with students who perform poorly in the General Secondary School Certificate examinations. Its graduates rank high among jobless university leavers in this Arab country of 80 million people. The situation has recently prompted Minister of Higher Education Hani Hilal to announce a ban on the creation of new law schools for the next 10 years and to drastically reduce the number of fresh students at the existing schools. His decision has met with mixed responses. "This decision is unconstitutional because it robs young people of the right to major in the subject studies they want," says Ahmed Saad, the chairman of the Civil Law Department at Cairo University, Egypt's most prestigious public university. Saad believes it would be better to hold admission tests for students willing to study law. "It is important to give students the opportunity to choose what they want to study instead of forcing certain disciplines on them," he stresses. "This will not happen by slapping a ban on constructing new law schools." Minister Hilal's controversial move is based on the findings of a study conducted by his Ministry. According to this study, the numbers of law students in Egypt rose to 244,000 in 2009 from 169,000 in 2002, being taught by 500 lecturers. The study also discovered that, at Cairo University's Law School, 965 students were taught by just one lecturer, while at the Law School of Alexandria University, another government-run institution, the figure rose to 1,200 students per lecturer. "The Ministry of Higher Education has worked out a plan to develop the quality of education, the main aim of which is to produce highly qualified people," Hilal has recently said. "However, this will not happen without ensuring that the number of students in the classes are commensurate with the number of lecturers available." According to him, the current status of law schools in Egypt makes this aim "impossible". "For example, there are now 50,000 law students at Cairo University. This leaves no room for applying quality standards or for effective student-staff interaction," he explains. Lending support to the ban on new law schools, Georgette Qelini, an MP and a law expert, cites the high unemployment rates among law school graduates in Egypt. "What is the use of churning out more graduates unwanted by the labour market?" she asks. "No more law schools should be built until the present law graduates get jobs. That said, it is important to make education job market-orientated." The ban is proving controversial with law students too. "I am against this decision because it will deny students interested in law the chance to study it," says Ahmed Abbas, a second-year law student at Cairo University. "The solution lies in raising the minimum grades required to attend this school, in order to revive the glory days of law schools as the schools of the elite." Hana Hamed, a third-year law student at the same university, disagrees. "I support the ban because, when the number of law students is drastically reduced, this will ensure a better quality of education. After all, law studies are difficult and require a lot of hard effort."
