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Part
01
African University Capacity: Egypt
The Coordination Office of the Ministry of Higher Education is responsible for conducting the Thanaweya Amma exam, which is the required examination taken by secondary students seeking to get admissions to universities in Egypt. In 2018, 487,847 students passed the exam.
FINDINGS
- In Egypt, admissions to university are based on the passing of the General Secondary Certificate Examination (Thanaweya Amma). Secondary school graduates are distributed among the public universities through the University Coordination Office of the Ministry of Higher Education, which applies specific rules that take into consideration the students’ grades, their choice for the type of discipline to study, the total number of secondary graduates.
- In 2018, 659,253 students took the Thanaweya Amma exams of which 74% (487,847) passed the exam.
- Almost 100% of the students who pass the Thanaweya Amma exam are admitted to higher education institutions.
- About a total of 2.8 million students are enrolled in universities in Egypt in 2017.
RESEARCH STRATEGY
We were not able to provide information on the intake capacity of Egyptian universities due to limited information. First, we searched through the governing body for education in Egypt and the Coordination Office of the Ministry of Higher Education, which is responsible for admissions to Egyptian public universities. We attempted to find data on the total student capacity of the country for each academic year. Although we were able to find information on the number of students that took the country's university entrance examination, we were not able to locate the total allocated slots for universities in the country using this strategy.
Next, we combed through media sites such as EgyptIndependent, EgyptToday, DialyNewsEgypt, TheCairoScene, EgyptEducation, Allafrica.com etc, UniversityWorldNews, NileInternational, Copts United, Mena, among others for information regarding the student intake capacity for Egyptian universities. Although the sources provided helpful insights into the higher education landscape in Egypt, there was no information on the intake capacity of the country's universities.
Then, we searched through third-party reports and publications regarding Egypt's educational system from sources such as PwC, European Commission's Egypt's overview of the higher education system, NacEgypt report, UNICEF, Gpseducation, Worldbank, USAID etc. After combing through these reports and publications, we couldn't find any information on the intake capacity of the country's universities, but we did discover that almost 100% of the students who pass the Thanaweya Amma exam are admitted to higher education institutions.
Due to limited information, we were not able to provide information on the intake capacity of Egyptian universities. According to reports, only 74% of students that took the national university entrance (Thanaweya Amma) passed. To determine the exact number of student who passed, we carried out a calculation by multiplying the percentage of student that passed by the total number of students that took the exam.
Total number of student that passed = 0.74 * 659,253 = 487,847