Introduction
During the second half of the 20th century, Egypt’s economy was over burdened by three wars that exhausted the greater part of its resources. Since the wars have ended, economic reform plans have been the main object of successive governments. In the 1990s, however, the Egyptian economy witnessed wide-ranging reforms toward a more competitive market-based system.

Historical Background
Al-Azhar, an Islamic establishment for well over 1,000 years (established in 975 AD), was primarily dedicated to teaching Islamic religion and studying the Quran. It took about 17 years to build Al-Azhar Mosque (971–988 AD), which was then used as the premises of the educational establishment. Modern Egyptian education, however, started in the time of Mohamed Ali Pasha (1798 AD), who established many schools for engineering, medicine, law, and other subjects.

In 1908, a national university was established in Egypt. Later in 1925, this national university was merged into a public university, and in 1940 was named after the king of Egypt at that time, Fouad El-Awal. In 1953, after the Egyptian revolution, it was named Cairo University.

Student Enrollment
Egypt has one of the world's largest higher education systems. In 1998-99, it enrolled some 1.28 million students. It is projected from data of previous years that the number of students will increase at an annual rate of at least 4%. If part-time students numbering about 250,000 are included, the total number of students rises to nearly 1.53 million, giving a ratio of approximately 22%. The overwhelming majority (about 99% of all students) attended public institutions.

The non-university stream of education absorbs a significant portion of the student population enrolled in tertiary education. Egypt has 51 public non-university institutions, of which 47 are 2-year Middle Technical Institutes (MTI) and 4 are 4-5-year higher technical institutes (HTI).

Gender
The number of female students enrolled in Egyptian universities and institutes has been continuously increasing as the literacy rate among females has increased (on average from about 30% to 40% over the last 20 years). The ratio of newly admitted male students to female students is nearly 2 to 1, whereas this ratio is nearly 1 to 1 for enrolled and graduated students.

Faculty
The main method of hiring academic staff in the current system is from the pool of graduating students at the bachelor's level. Often graduate students, who lack experience, and the expertise, serve as undergraduate teachers. Salaries of academic staff are very low. Across the ranks, the salary scale consists of a base (which is the same for all within a rank) plus additional increments, the amounts of which vary depending on the number of years of experience and on extra tasks that staff undertake. Senior administrative staff (deans and chairs) receive negligible monetary compensation for taking on administrative positions.

The normal workload allocation is 8 hours per week for full professors, 10 for associate professors, and 12 for lecturers, leaves little time to prepare for teaching. Limited remuneration is given to all staff members on a monthly basis.

Office spaces are neither sufficient nor adequately utilized. As a rule, universities do not provide academic staff with computers. Also, the limited availability of qualified laboratory technicians is source of major concern to faculty, particularly in disciplines, that depend on laboratory equipment for teaching and research.

Governance and Administration
An important reform issue is the lack of full autonomy of individual institutions. Egypt’s administrative-to-teaching staff ratio is high by international standards (4:3) and university officials cannot readily remedy this as personnel management is constrained by regulations similar to those in the civil service; salaries are not linked to performance and once an appointment is made, termination is very difficult. In addition, Egypt has no mandatory retirement age, leading to a relatively skewed age distribution, an inverted pyramid of senior faculty members with fewer junior teaching staff to meet the teaching, tutoring, and contact needs of the majority of students. Nearly all full-time faculty members are permanent from their first appointment.

The governance of the sector involves 2 separate frameworks and is ruled by 2 separate sets of legislation, 1 for the university sector and 1 for the non-university sector. The university sector has a governance advisory body known as the Supreme Council of Universities (SCU), chaired by the minister of Higher Education, and in theory, independent of the ministry. A similar but far less autonomous body exists for the HTIs in the non-university sector, with the same chairmanship. All major decisions concerning admission levels and standards, definition of programs and curricula, creating new academic positions for the recruitment and appointment of faculty, allocation of resources, establishment of academic standards, and the assessment of those standards are made by the MOHE through the SCU.

Research and Publishing
The general environment in the majority of universities does not foster research productivity or innovation by staff members. The main incentive for the majority of faculty members to initiate and publish research is to fulfill the requirements for promotion rather than to produce quality and innovative research. Inadequate equipment and testing facilities, limited funds allocated for research by the university, absence of remuneration for conducting the research, and the deficiency in the relationship between industrial enterprises and universities to support research are among the factors affecting the quality and quantity of research produced by Egyptian universities. Quality research work cited internationally from Egyptian universities is relatively low and disproportionate to the large number of faculty members working in Egyptian universities.

Funding and Resources
The government is responsible for offering Egyptian population free education at all levels. Overall expenditure on education as a proportion of GDP has grown from 3.9% in 1991 to 5.9% in 1998. With 5.9% of Egyptian GDP in 1997-98 allocated to education, of which 28% was allocated to higher education (See table 2).
At the institutional level financial resources are limited to government funds, student enrollment fees, funds obtained from centers of excellence established in some institutions for offering community services and/or research and consultation jobs, and funds obtained from joint research activities. Institutions have very limited authority over internal reallocation of resources among budget categories.

Private Institutions
Many applications are pending with the Ministry of Higher Education to open additional private for-profit universities/institutions (French, British and German universities are among the pending requests). The MOHE is setting-up the regulatory measures and criteria to establish private universities and is continually refining them based on the experience gained from working with the already established ones.

Note: For detailed account on the state of higher education in Egypt, please consult: Mohsen Elmahdy Said, African Higher Education: An International Reference Handbook (Damtew Teferra and Philip. G. Altbach, eds., Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 285-300.