An overview of Egyptian universities’ position in the global educational market
An overview of Egyptian universities’ position in the global educational market
Over the last decade, Egyptian universities have witnessed a ground-breaking demand for enrollment from Egyptian students or their other international counterparts.
According to Statista, during the academic year of 2021/2022, the number of enrolled students in public universities in Egypt was over 2.45 million. In comparison, 571,190 students were enlisted in private higher institutes in Egypt in the same academic year. Moreover, 228,911 students were registered in private universities.
Mentioned indications demonstrate the amazing evolution of this ever-growing sector in Egypt to comply with what is stated in Vision 2030 of the Egyptian Government (Egypt’s long-term roadmap for economic, environmental, and social development) that the higher education sector is working on delivering a high-quality educational system to meet the country’s labor market needs.
Here in this article, we will dive through shortly to present an overview of Egyptian universities’ position in the global educational market.
Egypt’s Strategy and groundwork for upgrading the higher education sector
Recently, The Egyptian official vision focused on diversifying the options for higher education. The development objectives of this vision were to expand private university capacity. Then working on modernizing and upgrading public education by establishing professional departments within several universities’ faculties of law, economics, and commerce, including successful English and French departments.
Launching more than 10 civil universities in different governorates and setting up for some foreign ones at the New Administrative Capital that grant degrees from a foreign university pushes the Egyptian strategy forward and help achieve balance regarding the educational process as a whole.
Also moving toward adopting modern ways of teaching to help graduates be properly prepared to enter an ever-changing, highly competitive, and extremely demanding job market is one of the national objectives in the scope of higher education.
The popularity of Egypt’s tertiary education amongst international students
According to UNESCO statistics, Egypt ranks as one of the top 20 most attractive countries for international students. In the academic year 2021/2022, Among the 3.5 million students enrolled in higher education in Egypt, only two percent were foreign students.
Due to this review period, foreigners enrolled in tertiary education in the country increased annually, except for a slight decline in 2017/2018, which could also be observed in the total number of students. Moreover, the number of Egyptians enrolled in the university followed the same pattern.
Needless to say, one of the most effective factors that push the popularity of Egyptian tertiary education forward is partnership agreements with the most trustworthy educational institutions in the world. Through those international partnerships, educational, and training programs are offered as well as exchange programs for students and faculty members.
That helped Egypt position itself as a key center for providing educational services in the Middle East and Africa, and place higher education and scientific research on world-class standards.
Competing with the world… an overview of Egyptian universities’ international ranking
The three key global rankings systems, which are the QS World University Rankings, The British Times Higher Education classification of global higher education institutions (THE), and The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) or the Shanghai Ranking) agreed that In the world’s higher education sector, Egyptian universities are among the fastest-growing ever.
By the end of 2022, 3 public universities were listed at the top of (THE) ranking, which are Aswan University, Mansoura University, and Suez Canal University. These indicators emphasized on both citations and Industry-funded research income for institutions. According to Scopus Data, Egypt ranks 5th in terms of citations over the 25-year period Compared to regional peers sitting above the likes of Qatar, Jordan, Kuwait, and the UAE.
Regarding research capabilities, it has been noted that Public institutions that have been around for a long time still perform far better than their private sector counterparts.
For its part, ARWU is known to be one of the most authoritative sources to list global universities’ reputations. Also has announced Cairo University’s achievement progress of 100 places after its rank came among the best 301-400 global universities. The Egyptian deep- rooted university worked on developing policies in terms of international scientific publications and getting international accreditations for its programs.
Focusing on innovation and STEM fields
According to the UN’s World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) report, an indicator of a country’s ability to innovate, Compared to countries with lower-middle incomes, Egypt actually ranks quite well regarding spending as a share of GDP and researchers’ knowledge and technology outputs.
Egypt ranks 94th out of 132 countries due to WIPO, which proves the great performance in quality innovations and scientific research, particularly in the STEM fields that enhance the Egyptian overall higher education strategy toward internationalization and turning Egyptian universities into global ones to strengthen its position in the global educational market.
References
1- Egypt’s great university expansion
2- How are we faring when it comes to academic research in Egypt?
3- How will Egypt reform its education system?
4- Egyptian universities, research centres advance in global rankings in 2022: Education minister