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Negotiations are currently underway to open branches of Egyptian universities overseas, with the efforts taking place within a push internationalize the higher education sector in Egypt and education service exports, according to a statement covering a meeting between President Abdel Fattah El Sisi with Higher Education Minister Ayman Ashour, Education Minister Mohamed Abdel Latif, and Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly.
The move is being done in partnership with the private sector, with the state not responsible for bearing any of the costs, according to the statement that provided little to no other details on the new initiative.
Higher Education Ministry spokesman Adel Abdel Ghaffar named Cairo University, Alexandria University, and Ain Shams University as among the universities that will hopefully soon sign an agreement to establish overseas branches in comments to Ahmed Moussa on Ala Mas’ouleety following the release of the statement (watch, runtime: 2:04).
The overseas branches will be in countries in Africa, Asia, and the Arab world, Abdel Ghaffar said, without naming any particular country by name.
Remember: The government has been hard at work trying to push the country’s universities up international rankings, with the latest rankings mostly showing local higher education establishments steadily creeping up the lists. To illustrate the importance of these rankings to the state, a target to increase the number of Egyptian universities on the QS World University Rankings from 15 to 28 was explicitly mentioned as part of the plan for El Sisi’s third term by the Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center.
The most recent Times Higher Education Arab University Rankings saw an Egyptian university make the top ten for the first time, with Cairo University coming in at eighth place, up from 28th the year before.
Better ranked universities should mean more appetite abroad for overseas branches — and also more international students, with a government source previously telling EnterpriseAM that the government wants to see 200k international students enrolled in Egyptian universities by 2030, up from the roughly 30k enrolled last academic year.
