Associations cap private HE graduates’ membership

ByAshraf Khaled. Professional associations in Egypt have begun clamping down on graduates from private universities who gained admission to higher education with school-leaving marks far lower than those set by state-run institutions.
In recent months, Egypt’s engineering, veterinary and doctors' associations have announced bans on acceptance of new members who attended private universities despite low school marks.
And this month the Pharmacology Association said it would not accept among its members graduates of private universities who had achieved lower than 80% aggregate marks in secondary school certificate examinations.
“The association has taken this decision based on its responsibility towards its members and out of its keenness to ensure that proper admission rules are observed in private universities,” said Mohammed Abdul Gawad, chair of the Pharmacology Association. He added that syllabuses taught at pharmacology schools in public and private universities were challenging and needed “bright minds”.
The association’s deputy chair, Seifallah Imam, said the ban would be applied retroactively from last year, when minimum admission grades to Egypt’s key higher institutions soared. Minimum grades for secondary school-leavers to attend public universities have also surged this year, observers said. For example, the minimum grades for attending a pharmacology school in a state-run university have hit 97% of the overall marks of the secondary school certificate exams, compared to 78% for attending a pharmacology school at a private university.
The associations have said their curbs on accepting new members are aimed at maintaining “high professional standards”, cutting rates of joblessness and safeguarding the principle of equal opportunities among university students.
Adopting a market-style economy, since the 1990s Egypt has licensed the creation of fee-paying universities, which now comprise 17% of institutions. Critics of the institutions say they are money focused and disrupt the principle of equal opportunities by admitting new students with low marks, mainly because their families can afford the fees. Denying these accusations, private universities argue that they offer whole and partial scholarships to top-flight applicants. The Pharmacology Association said that a recent study it conducted showed the local market needed no more than 3,500 graduates annually.
Pharmacology schools in private and public universities in Egypt churn out nearly 10,000 graduates a year, according to the study. “This figure far exceeds the actual needs,” said deputy chair Imam.
Some years ago, the Egyptian Doctors’ Association won a lawsuit obliging the country’s public and private universities to admit a total of 3,500 new students a year. The ruling was never enforced, as an average of 8,000 new students annually attend medical schools. The ban threatened by the professional associations has been criticised as meddlesome.
“This move constitutes interference in the affairs of the Higher Education Ministry and the Higher University Council, which is responsible for working out the admission policy and specifying the numbers of new students,” said Zaki al-Saadani, a higher education expert.
“The professional associations have no right to set minimum marks for attending university. They [the associations] may have the rights to hold tests for graduates applying for their membership,” he wrote in the opposition daily in Al Wafd.
Al-Saadani added that the restrictions adopted by the associations “distort the image of private universities and deal them a hard blow”.
Neither private universities nor the Higher Education Ministry have commented.