The allure of ‘easy’: reflections on the learning experience in private higher education institutes in Egypt

Abstract

Private institutions are increasingly visible in the higher education landscape of Egypt. Many of these institutions, however, are within the ‘demand-absorbing’ category, offered at relatively lower fees and requiring lower test scores for admission. Building on interview data, this paper looks at how the graduates of some of these institutes reflect on their learning experience. In the discourse of these graduates, the learning experience is described as ‘easy’ and less demanding. This ‘easy’ education is accepted, justified and even celebrated. Credential fetish and the social status associated with a higher education degree are central to the perpetuation of the allure of ‘easy’. However, ‘easy’ education is also condemned for its compromised quality and low status. The paper seeks to situate these competing and overlapping discourses on private institutes within the analysis of the structure of the education system in Egypt and the global neoliberal tide for education reform.

Keywords:

• Education sociology
• higher education
• education marketisation
• qualitative approaches
• Egypt

Notes

1. Open university sections have been incorporated in a number of public universities. These sections offer evening and weekend classes towards a university degrees at higher fees than regular classes. Enrolment is open to those who completed their secondary education stage in more than five years.

2. A key exception in the structure of the higher education system in Egypt has been the American University of Cairo, which was founded in 1919 as a private non-profit American institution.

3. These sections targeted graduates of elite private secondary schools who received instruction in foreign languages in the pre-university stages.

4. Data provided in this paragraph build on the author’s communication with the Strategic Planning Unit at the Ministry of Higher Education in 2013 and in 2016. The author is grateful for the support extended by this unit to the study.

5. All interviews were conducted in Arabic and translated by the author. Some clarification notes have been added in square brackets within quotations to help explain the meaning or context. A few Arabic words have been kept and transliterated, also in brackets next to their English translation, on account of their significance.