How Egyptian educators are navigating the AI revolution

🏫 For any educator, student, or parent, AI is a touchy subject. As AI tools advance and infiltrate our lives at a dizzyingly fast pace, no one can keep up — particularly not our academic institutions, which are slow and methodical by nature — which raises the question: are educators preparing students for the AI revolution that they will be faced with when they enter the job market?

The problem in a nutshell

In a Gallup poll earlier this month, more than half of college students surveyed in the US said their school either discouraged (42%) or outright banned (11%) AI use. While we don’t have statistics for Egypt, we’re willing to wager that it’s not much different. Parents that we spoke to unilaterally agree that in most Egyptian universities, students are either not supposed to use AI or prohibited from using it beyond a certain threshold. In reality, however, AI use in the classroom is prevalent, and educators know it, but there’s no clear path forward on how this should be addressed. What does and doesn’t constitute cheating in the age of AI?

“It’s certainly a debate, but completely banning students from using AI is simply preparing them for a world that does not exist anymore,” Dr. Moataz El Helaly (LinkedIn), associate professor at AUC’s Onsi Sawiris School of Business and an AI in higher education consultant, tells EnterpriseAM. But there are concerns. In a January 2026 survey of US college and university faculty, 95% felt that overreliance on AI would diminish critical thinking skills, erode academic integrity, and undermine the value of a college degree.

Students are using AI for everything from papers to coding and presentations. While most teachers and professors use AI detectors, there are tools out there that students use to bypass the detectors, a parent of a university student tells us. These so-called “AI Humanizers” that convert AI text into a more human-like tone are not 100% reliable nor are they without risk — not to mention what they teach kids about ethics. The AI detectors themselves aren’t even accurate, and in many cases, they mistakenly identify original work as AI-generated.

It’s confusing for everyone — the students, the parents, and the schools. “I use AI to teach my children even though I and their school tell them not to use AI,” a parent of two school-aged children tells us. Popular platforms like Save My Exams provide GCSE, IGCSE, A-Level, and IB students with revision notes, flashcards, past papers, and mock exams. Claude and ChatGPT are also capable of delivering the same tutoring functions and are being used broadly by high school and college students.

“AI is a great tool to help students summarize and understand material at home because it can adapt to an individual student’s pace, and we encourage our students to use it as such,” Karim Mostafa, CEO of Eduhive (LinkedIn), an education management company and a CIRA subsidiary that manages several schools in Egypt, tells EnterpriseAM. “Officially, however, students aren’t allowed to use AI to write papers or complete assignments. It’s fairly easy for us to detect which students are using AI tools to study and which ones are just blindly copying because we continue to use traditional written and oral examinations, where AI can’t help you.”

What should schools and universities in Egypt do to address this?

“The future will not be about humans or machines, but about coexisting and collaborating with machines to unlock new potential,” Dr. SherifKamel, dean of AUC’s Onsi Sawiris School of Business, says in a CEMS AI report. Kamel believes that the question we should be asking is not “will AI take my job?” but rather “how can AI make me better at my job?”

AI won’t diminish the human role: Kamel goes on to say, “as AI systems become more sophisticated, they will automate routine tasks and analyse data at scale and speed; however, this will not diminish the human role — it will transform it. Our value lies in critical thinking, creativity, judgment, and empathy, which are capabilities machines cannot replicate [yet].”

“Universities need to revisit the value proposition of what they’re offering to students because it’s no longer just about knowledge; it’s about what type of skills we want our graduates to have,” El Helaly says.

“When any new technology emerges, universities have to pause and review their programs. We have to ask ourselves, ‘are we preparing students for jobs that are obsolete, or are we preparing them with the right skills and knowledge that they need to leverage and benefit from in their professional lives?’ Now the challenge, and what is different this time, is that AI is a very fast-moving target,” adds El Helaly.

As for schools, Mostafa agrees that they have to adapt to advancements in AI in everything that they do. “We are currently developing a group-wide policy for AI and it should be implemented in the next academic year. However, I don’t think you can ever lose traditional pen and paper examinations. Students still need to be able to handwrite and think critically.”

A flexible approach

For now, El Helaly says that most universities are adopting a flexible approach to AI. “In some courses we have to rely on paper and pen or closed exams to make sure that students have a grasp of the foundations without AI. For open-ended assignments, assessments, or papers, some professors allow students to use AI and acknowledge that they have used it. Some professors ask to see the prompt that was used to evaluate how rightfully or logically the students are thinking about solving a specific problem. Assessing students' critical thinking, approach to a potential real-life case study is the key to working with AI.”

Tackling the new shifts won’t be easy for anyone. But ignoring them or pretending they don’t exist is no longer an option for educators as AI becomes an essential part of all jobs at all levels.

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