The Opportunity to Learn

Creating Equitable Access to Higher Education in Egypt

This project aims to analyze the accessibility and equity of higher education in Egypt, assess the extent of its underlying problems, and provide sustainable policy recommendations for their rectification. The higher education system now fails to meet its goals: learning outcomes are very low, the system fails to produce sufficiently skilled workers for the labor market, and Egyptian academia is not a sustainable, robust establishment. Policy recommendations focus on addressing the dual goals of increasing access and increasing quality while stemming off any large tradeoffs. Given the scale of the proposed reforms, gradual and deliberate implementation of these policies will be important in ensuring that reforms are properly paced, expectations are realistic, and outcomes optimized. In Egypt's context, it will be of utmost importance to garner political and social will in order to effectively implement these policies.