Soapbox:

Education in dilemma

By Mohsen Zahran

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Recently a 25-year-old masters student revealed to me that she had never before opened a book and read it fully, nor even a newspaper. Like her colleagues, she betrays scant knowledge of her undergraduate or pre-college education. Elsewhere, the 12-year-old apprentice mechanic fixing my car told me that he dropped out of school during sixth grade; that he can't read or write nor do basic addition and subtraction.

Such examples are omnipresent in Egypt. They are staggering, penetrating and alarming and reflect the painful reality of Egypt's educational fallacy -- the fallacy and consequences of free education.

Solutions must originate from a comprehensive national commitment to drive the quality of education to world-high levels and to capitalise on that excellence outside the strictures of bureaucracy, corruption and attendant salary scales. Free education in Egypt has failed to propel the nation forward; it breeds lameness and impotence. In reality, it is not free but costly, both tangibly and intangibly. Education must come with a cost, with scholarships provided to support the gifted and the underprivileged.

Let us abandon the ostrich-like approach and seek a renaissance, as Japan, Korea, Malaysia, China and India have done. Private universities must not be established before securing their own adequate material and human resources, even if they have to employ highly qualified foreign staff from top universities worldwide, whatever the cost. Research budgets must be boosted to not less than five per cent of GDP, and proper educational facilities must be provided to meet new challenges.

The horizon is open, the hopes of millions plentiful, the future unfolding, and the will to change abundant.

This week's Soapbox speaker is a professor of planning at Alexandria University.