In recent years, the Government of Egypt has driven major reforms for modernising the country. However, Egypt’s higher education system has remained largely unchanged and without fundamental reform of the sector the country will face difficulties in improving its competitiveness.

This independent review of Egypt’s higher education system focuses on areas in need of attention by policy makers and stakeholders, including system steering and institutional governance; student access to higher education; educational quality and effectiveness; research, development and innovation; and finance. It contains an analysis of the system and valuable recommendations which, taken together, represent a major programme of structural and cultural reform of Egyptian higher education over the decade to 2020.

Acronyms
Executive Summary
Chapter 1. Introduction
-Purpose and scope of the exercise
-Request from Egypt and Terms of Reference
-Country Background Report
-Caveats
-Definitions of tertiary education programmes
Chapter 2. Egypt and its Educational System: An Overview
-Economic development
-Human development
-Population
-Workforce
-Education system
-Technical and vocational education
-TVET and the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED
-Other TVET programmes
-In-service training
-Higher education
-Main findings and conclusions
Chapter 3. Development Strategy
-Overview
-The Government’s Five-year Plan
-Accommodating demographic growth
-Strategic choices for higher education
-Recommendations
Chapter 4. System Steering and Institutional Governance
-Introduction
-Policy framework
-System steering in Egypt
-Governance of the TVET sector
-Institutional governance reform in Egypt
-Main findings and conclusions
-Recommendations
Chapter 5. Student Access to Higher Education
-Policy framework
-Where should decisions about student admissions be made?
-What are the criteria by which student admission decisions should be made?
-Concerns about the current system for admission to higher education in Egypt
-Assessment of proposed changes to the higher education admissions system
-Main findings and conclusions
-Recommendations
-Annex 5A. A Typology of Admission Policies Worldwide
Chapter 6. Educational Quality and Effectiveness
-Introduction
-Policy framework
-The quality of Egyptian higher education
-Quality of technical and vocational education and training
-TVET qualification standards
-Specific observations regarding the quality of higher education
-Educational inputs
-Quality of the educational process
-The effectiveness of higher education for Egypt’s labour market
-Internationalisation of Egyptian higher education
-International student mobility
-Academic staff mobility
-Second language acquisition
-International dimension in the curriculum
-Capacity to support internationalisation
-Quality assurance and improvement initiatives in Egypt
-National qualifications framework
-Recommendations
Chapter 7. Research, Development and Innovation
-The Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) framework
-Readiness for the knowledge economy: the knowledge economy index
-The structure and organisation of the RDI system in Egypt
-Comparative analysis of Egypt’s performance in RDI
-Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and challenges of Egypt’s RDI system
-Lessons from international experience
-Restructuring the RDI system and its institutions
-Improving the relevance, quality and impact of RDI initiatives and programmes
-The challenges of priority setting in RDI
-Ensuring the long term sustainability of public funding of RDI
-Energising the RDI agenda
-Evaluation and assessment of funded RDI initiatives
-Main findings and conclusions
Chapter 8. Finance
-Introduction
-Resource mobilisation
-Financing technical and vocational education and training
-Private funding of higher education
-Cost-sharing
-Resource diversification in public universities
-Research funding
-Formulating a sustainable funding strategy
-Resource allocation
-Resource utilisation
-Equity aspects
-Main findings and conclusions
-Recommendations
-Annex 8A. Resource Diversification Matrix for Public Tertiary Institutions by Category and Source of Income
Chapter 9. Reform Implementation
-Progressing reform in Egyptian higher education
-Selection of implementation strategy
-An agenda of initial initiatives
-Informing the debate
-Recommendations