Egypt plagued by discrimination in higher education based on ‘superior and inferior’ faculties

The transition from secondary to higher education is an important step for young adults all around the world. In Egypt, however, this transition and students’ choice of major has been plagued by discrimination due to social, financial and psychological elements, with the higher educational faculties being labeled either “superior” or “inferior”.

Parents dream of their children entering the “superior” faculties, pushing students in Egypt’s national high school system, the Thanawya Amma, to garner the highest scores on the national exams in order to secure their admission to these top faculties.

Studying medicine, pharmacy, engineering and political science is highly preferable, and their faculties are considered “superior”, while the majority of society looks down on students who enter “inferior” faculties such as commerce, arts and humanities. Even local media outlets like the state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram, Sada Al Balad, Cairo 24, and others use the description of “top faculties” in their headlines.

For that reason, parents spend thousands of Egyptian pounds annually for their children to attend private lessons over the last two years of the Thanawya Amma, Egypt’s national pre-university system that lasts for three years, during which students have to choose between two tracks.

The first track is the scientific section, known as ‘ilmi, where students study certain scientific subjects like mathematics and science, in addition to the Arabic and English languages. Starting from the second year in this track, students choose between two specializations: studying math subjects like geometry, algebra, and trigonometry, or the natural sciences like biology, chemistry and physics. Students must join this track in order to qualify to enter the top faculties of engineering, medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, and science. 

Meanwhile, the second track is the literary section, known as adabi, where students study subjects like geography, history, philosophy and logic, as well as the Arabic and English languages. 

Students in the second year study hard to secure the highest grades in their final exams, but the third grade is crucial for determining which faculties one can enter, with a passing grade needed to continue into post-secondary education. Depending on the test results, students are grouped into three tiers, with the first tier reserved for students who garner the highest grades, enabling them to be admitted to the top faculties. Those in the other two tiers can only apply for the lesser faculties, which then affects their future in the labor market.

This year’s pass rate recorded 78.81%, with only 598,723 students passing out of a total of 759,676 who took the exams, Education Minister Reda Hegazy said in a press conference on July 31.

This process is particularly stressful for students, taking a psychological toll to the extent that some students who fail to get their desired scores commit suicide.

Al-Masry Al-Youm reported on August 2 that nine high school students committed suicide nationwide this year because they did not obtain the scores required for joining the faculties they wanted.

Last year, a high school student hanged himself to death, while three female students tried to commit suicide after their exam scores were revealed, Masrawy reported. In 2021, five high school students committed suicide, mostly because of their scores, the news website reported in August of the same year, noting that two other female students passed away during their exams in physics and biology.

Delusional societal legacy

Educational expert Magdy Hamza told Jusoor Post there should not be discrimination in education, but this concept is a “societal legacy” and negatively affects high school students. He noted that some private tutors promote this concept among students so as to keep giving their private lessons, guaranteeing what has become a major source of income for them.

“What I see is a delusion of the top faculties,” he said, adding that there should not be a preference between faculties, because different studies complete each other and are needed within the society. 

Hamza revealed that 70% of first-year students in the faculties of medicine at Assuit, Aswan and Ganoub Al-Wadi universities failed this year (2022/2023), which indicates that they were not qualified enough to study the major they joined just because it is top. He said that students should instead be required to take faculty-specific placement tests before joining any major to see whether or not they are qualified enough to study it.

Marwa Yahya, a journalist and mother, is of the belief that it is the parents who push their children to join “prestigious faculties,” regardless of what their children want.

“Parents in Egypt have the negative concept that they are the ones who invest in their children and therefore have the right to tell their children that they must fulfill the dream of entering faculties chosen by the parents. [This is] because parents pay money for private lessons, even if the student has no desire or ability to study in [the faculty],” she clarified in comments to Jusoor Post.

“This is a wrong idea,” Yahya said, adding that the situation is related to two factors: social awareness, especially among family members, and job opportunities. She clarified that the faculties of medicine and engineering are seen as more prestigious due to the high salaries of engineers and doctors after graduation compared to other jobs in the labor market.

However, some students started asking themselves why they should have to study for more than seven years even though there are other alternatives or fields that generate more money faster, she said.

Yahya explained that about 20% of students nowadays have started to think differently in order to increase their incomes. She added that some doctors and engineers have changed their careers, noting, “For example, a medical graduate might change his field and go into artificial intelligence because this is the future.” 

‘My parents asked me to join’

Amena Khalifa, a professor of interdisciplinary studies in the Faculty of English Language and Literature at Al-Azhar University, told Jusoor Post that this parental concept is more materialistic and money-related rather than societal.

Khalifa explained that this discrimination comes due to the availability of job opportunities. For instance, medical faculty graduates are appointed immediately after graduation by the government in public hospitals and pharmacies, she said, noting however that the level of competitiveness within a given field and the views of society are other factors that cannot be ignored. 

Forcing students into certain faculties “is one of the biggest mistakes that I saw,” she said, adding that she was teaching a poetry course to a number of students this year and one of the students voiced her unwillingness to learn English.

“[A student] told me directly, ‘I hate English and the study of languages.’ When I asked her why she didn’t join a field she loves, her response was, ‘Because we know that the Faculty of Languages and Simultaneous Interpretation is top, and my parents asked me to join it because it is the best.’ Learning languages is not her passion and she wished to study home economics,” she continued.

Khalifa accused the society and parents of killing students’ ambitions, saying, “This is the biggest destructive idea for students. [The student mentioned above] told me, ‘I don’t know what I should do when I graduate, because I do not like working in the field of languages.’”

The professor added that this case is repeated a lot, giving another example of a student in the Faculty of Dentistry who revealed that her enrollment in the faculty was based on her mother’s desire despite the student’s passion for learning handmade crafts.

Discrimination inside “top faculties”

Mai Mohamed, a professional fitness coach who changed her career from architecture, told Jusoor Post that higher education should not be classified into “superior” and “inferior”, but the society unfortunately suffers from the concept of superiority.

Giving an example, Mohamed said that one of her professors, who was teaching computer science in the Faculty of Engineering at Modern Academy, held the idea that the department of computer science is better than the architecture department because the latter is focused on the study of theoretical curricula more than practical courses, unlike computer science.

“With his belief, the professor created a generation […] that holds this discriminatory concept,” she said.

“The problem in society is that some people show off that they are better in certain fields just to feel superior over others, not because they want to be good in this major,” Mohamed continued. 

“Most people don’t understand that they complete each other and that each person works for the sake of the others,” she said.