Selection for university education in egypt:: practice, philosophy and perspective

Abstract

On 12 May 1979, the Cairo newspaper, Al-Ahram, announced that 132,000 successful General Secondary Certificate students would he likely to he accepted by the universities and institutes for the academic year 1979/80, compared with 112,000 accepted in 1978/79. The universities alone will therefore offer places to 75,000 compared with 70,000 in the previous year. This means that the problem which attracted this researcher’s attention in 1973/74 is still in existence. Moreover, as the number of students is increasing year by year, the pressure upon the universities is exacerbated. The questions asked were, firstly, why all these thousands of young Egyptians who hold the General Secondary Certificate desire university education and, secondly, why the major response of the Government was and still is expansion and an ever-increasing intake of students in the universities. Is expansion within the university education sector alone, instead of a wide diversity in post-secondary education, the appropriate response to such strong demands? The large number of students might result in vigorous competition to gain places in their chosen faculties. How can such places be offered to each individual, and furthermore, what criteria should the universities employ in their choice of candidates and to what extent can the Co-ordination Office, which is the executive agent responsible for selection or distribution of students, succeed in ensuring equality of opportunity as well as satisfying the choice of faculty and university made by each student? Selection for universities cannot be separated from the purposes of university education itself. The motivation of the consumers, i.e. the students themselves, in coming to university, is also very important. How far does students' motivation reflect the meaning of university education to the general public in the context of the circumstances of contemporary Egyptian society? To cover this wide area, this research consists of seven chapters together with an introduction and a conclusion. The main concern of this research is the selection system or the admission policy to universities in Egypt. A questionnaire was designed to explore the students' purposes in coming to university and the relation between their initial choice of faculty and the place which they eventually occupied. Their views about the Co-ordination Office's system were also explored. In addition, this questionnaire aimed to indicate what equality of educational opportunity means in practice in the context of Egyptian society. The fieldwork, which was carried out in two of Egypt's universities, was dependent on student samples from 19 faculties. There follows a discussion of the stated purposes of university education in Egypt as set out in official documents. The final chapter outlines a new policy post-secondary education in Egypt and a proposal for a new system for selection.