Low exam scores force Egyptian students to give up dream of enrolling at top colleges

By Mohamed Mahmoud in Cairo
For Al-Shorfa.com
2010-07-19



				[KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images] Egyptian students are waiting to see if their marks will allow them to attend Egypt's top public universities.

[KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images] Egyptian students are waiting to see if their marks will allow them to attend Egypt's top public universities.

Mohamed Ashraf 's mother cried tears of joy upon learning that her son scored 86% on the thanawiya amma (secondary school final exam). Mohamed appeared to have a great chance to enter an engineering college at any Egyptian public university.

But the joy of Ashraf's family was short-lived because the Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education decided not to lower the minimum admission scores for public universities to match the unusual declining scores from this year's thanawiya amma. The minimum score to attend engineering remained at 88%.

The success rate in this year's Thanawiya group was 50.5%, making it the worst result in 30 years.

Ashraf's concern is shared by thousands of students in Egypt, who will not realise their dream this year of attending their college of choice. This is a result of a large gap between low thanawiya amma scores of students this year and the cut-off for admission to most science and humanities colleges.

The crisis of this year's thanawiya amma is the result of the so-called "gap year". In the late 1980s Egyptian authorities cancelled the sixth grade in schools for economic reasons, but reintroduced it in 2005, admitting that the cancellation had adversely the performance of pupils.

This meant that students in the fifth grade in 2005 would now graduate in 2011, not 2010.

As a result, Egypt had no students in the final year of secondary school in 2010. Most thanawiya amma students this year, about 69,000, are students who had either failed the exams last year and had to retake them, or could not write last year for 'compulsory' reasons – for example, if they were ill. There is no limit on how many times a student can take the final secondary exams in order to improve their scores

Officials at the Ministry of Higher Education said the decision not to change the scores needed for admission to public colleges was aimed at applying the principle of equal opportunity.

"The gap year has created an exceptional situation, which should be handled in an exceptional way," Moustafa Argawi, chair of the law department at the state-run al-Azhar University, said in an interview with University World News. "Without laying down special rules, ill-qualified students would this year get the chance to attend top colleges. This is unfair and counter-productive."

But other education experts say the government should have formulated a better plan to deal with the "gap year".

"The Ministry of Higher Education has known for years there would be this gap between scores and admission cut-off for colleges during the gap year and did not take action," Dr. Kamal Mughith, former head of the National Centre for Educational Research, told Al-Shorfa.

In Mughith's view, the only solution for students "is to resort to private universities, which not all students can afford, particularly the science colleges, such as medicine and engineering, which can cost more than 40,000 pounds a year."

The Ministry of Higher Education's university admissions and co-ordination office closed its doors July 18th following a five-day period in which the 35,000 students who passed this year's thanawiya amma could submit college applications.

The admissions and co-ordination office is a centralised department that determines minimum scores for admission to all colleges based on colleges' needs. Announcement of this year's admissions are expected Wednesday.

The scores needed for admission to colleges, announced by the co-ordination office, showed the number of students eligible for acceptance to medical schools would be no more than 500 students, compared with an estimated 5,000 accepted last year. There are 1,887 students who earned scores between 85-90%.

Meanwhile, 550 students will enter pharmacy, 150 will enter dentistry, and 2,100 will enter engineering and computer science colleges. Only 70 students will enter economics and political science. Another 55 will enter media.

The number of students accepted at top colleges during the 2011 academic year will be 8-12% of the number admitted last year.

"The phenomenon of low scores did not occur for more than 15 years in Egypt, and there has not been this few graduating thanawiya amma students in decades," Mohamed Habib, a journalist specialising in educational affairs, told Al-Shorfa.

Muna Saeed Mohamed said, "I scored 94%, and will not be able to enter the college of medicine because the cut-off is 95%."

"It is unfair to apply past years' medical school cut-off criteria to this year's graduating thanawiya amma students," she added. "There should be an understanding for the circumstances we experienced."

To enrol in the college of dentistry, Amr Mahmoud has no choice but private universities. He said, "Admissions will not lower the cut-off for government dentistry colleges from 93%, and my grades did not exceed 90%. We should have been given a chance like our peers in past years."

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Reader Comments

2011-01-04 07:04:00

There is no real education in Egypt. Unfortunately, we face bitter disappointment.

دلال2010-08-13 14:05:00

Actually, higher education in Egypt is going through many problems, as the education received by the students in Egypt is no longer useful with the development in countries around the world today and at all the universities of the world. Another reason is the spread of corruption among the students and the principles of nepotism, favoritism and bribes offered to professors at the universities in Egypt. Some of these professors with evil souls request large amounts of money from students, to help them easily pass exams without any work, and they eventually graduate from the university when in fact they do not know anything. These negative aspects that accompany the Egyptian education in universities harm its reputation, and there must be is a swift reaction and the issuance of penalties on those who take bribes, in order to prevent this situation from recurring or to continue existing. Also, another problem prevails among university students these days. It is the problem of the spread of drugs, cannabis and pills. There is trafficking of these substances by some of the students, who sell them to their friends and addicts among the rest of the students. This indicates a ruin in the future of university education in Egypt, and there must be a sustained follow-up by the competent authorities and the government in general.

يونس محمد2010-08-07 03:00:00

The education on the level of universities in Egypt suffers from problems in the curricula which are taught in the Egyptian universities, that do not keep up with the current level of development taking place in the world today. In addition, the conditions of the university students are bad. Every college student suffers from several problems, including the fact that the prevalence of bribery in the Egyptian universities has become very clear, and it has started having a significant impact on the psyche of the students. University education in Egypt needs to be examined, maintained, or even redesigned by specialists. Improvement should be made to the Egyptian education, especially the stage of the university, which must be a good phase, during which each student receives science and knowledge, so as to be qualified and ready to play their role in society.

Fozan2010-07-28 13:04:00

It is the duty of the Egyptian government to build new universities and to supply them with all the necessities for success, in terms of providing modern scientific and sophisticated laboratories and the provision of new scientific curricula, as well as teaching personnel who hold senior academic certificates. These aspects will help the universities offer the best educational tools to students, in addition to working on the expansion of the universities' old buildings and repairing them, so they will be suitable and sufficient to accommodate additional numbers of students. All that will certainly contribute to attracting the students to study in public universities again, because private universities are not good when compared to public universities, and because public education is free. Then, we will see a lot of students from private universities going to transfer their papers to continue their studies at public universities.

2010-07-28 05:03:00

There is a big difference between private and public education, as the former is characterized by high costs that burden students, in addition to the fact that private education in most colleges and universities is marked by weakness and favoritism by professors towards their students, in the form of giving them grades that they may not deserve, because the students pay a lot of money to go to these private colleges and universities. Moreover, most private universities are still not recognized by the government or by the rest of the accredited and internationally known world's universities. On the other hand, public education is free of charge and does not cost students any cumbersome or large payments. It is equally available to all, and it provides the best teaching methods, managed by qualified teachers who hold major academic certificates from the best universities in the world. The certifications awarded by public universities are recognized by other universities in the world. But if we consider the real reasons why students go to private universities, we will know that the reasons are logical and acceptable, because the public universities in Egypt no longer meet the aspirations of the students and no longer accommodate their growing numbers, because the Egyptian government and the Ministry of Higher Education did not develop a deliberate plan to cope with the scientific growth and progress taking place in Egypt. There is a state of complacency with what currently exist on the ground in terms of fixed assets; by this I mean the universities, which have been here for dozens of years since their construction.

عقيلة صالح سلمان2010-07-27 05:03:00

Egypt suffers from many problems, particularly in the field of higher education, because of the policies of the ruling dictatorial regime in Egypt, which does not consider the needs and requirements of the Egyptian people. The supporters of the Egyptian dictatorship are immersed in feverish attempts to satisfy their own desires and achieve their personal and partisan interests, forgetting the people and their interests. We notice that the Egyptian youth have difficulty in completing their undergraduate study in public universities, because these universities are no longer capable of accommodating the growing numbers of students or meeting their aspirations, due to the lack of faculty and staff, and the obsolete scientific curricula, as well as the shortage of suitable educational facilities. All this happened because of the absence of genuine planning by the Egyptian government, which did not build new universities or expand the old universities to accommodate the students. This forced many of the university students in Egypt to resort to private universities in order to achieve their scientific and educational ambitions, and because these universities provide them with amenities, new curricula and modern teaching methods, which are not available in public universities. In my opinion, private universities offer the students what they look for, including the conditions and circumstances that allow them to complete their university studies. Meanwhile, these universities cost them a great deal, due to the high admission fees of such universities. Of course, this overburdens the Egyptian citizen, as the Egyptian society suffers from widespread poverty and unemployment.

2010-07-27 05:02:00

I see it as the duty of the Egyptian government to develop Egyptian public universities and to build new ones, and to provide them with all requirements that ensure the success of the university education, through the establishment of modern scientific laboratories and providing them with modern curricula. The Egyptian government also needs to devise plans to ensure that the public universities can accommodate the growing numbers of students who want to complete their university studies. Such things represent an integral part of the state's duties towards its citizens, since they contribute to improving their life and preventing them from resorting to private universities. Certainly, if the Egyptian Ministry of Education developed and modernized public universities ‎and worked on making them able to accommodate the students, these universities would be better than the private universities. That is because public universities are prestigious and recognized instituitions, like the Cairo University. They would also avoid the students paying the high tuition fees required by private universities.

احمد محمد عوض2010-07-21 13:04:00

The solution to completing the number of college enrollments is to accept the students of the Azhar Institutes who got scores that qualify them to enter these colleges – of course, if they want to apply to them.

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