When Nile University opened four years ago, it offered something unusual in Egyptian higher education. In a country with weak research infrastructure, the small private nonprofit engaged students and professors in applied research in high-demand fields, such as information technology and construction engineering. Over time, it has developed global partnerships and international support.
But today the university finds itself in the cross hairs of post-revolutionary politics. The government has repossessed its soon-to-be new campus. Uncertain about the institution’s fate, many corporate and philanthropic backers have stopped their donations.
A high-placed government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the state was “rectifying” the improper allocation of public land and funds to a private university. Supporters say the university is a target because it was supported, and is thus now tainted, by the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak.
“It’s unbelievable.” says Tarek Khalil, Nile’s president. “They are killing the most promising university in the country.”
Egypt’s Ministry of Higher Education has offered words of support for Nile University, but the new campus is under the control of the Egyptian cabinet, which has suggested that it will become part of the future Zewail City of Science and Technology, a popular $1-billion project proposed by Ahmed Zewail, an Egyptian-American Caltech professor and Nobel laureate.
The plight of the university, which enrolls nearly 400 students but had hoped eventually to expand to 6,000, has attracted international attention.
Egyptian academics abroad have rallied to the university’s cause. Yasser Hosni, a professor at the University of Central Florida and a former colleague of Mr. Khalil’s, has collected nearly 400 signatures from Egyptian and other academics on a petition to save Nile University. “Many of us are really puzzled by what is going on in Egypt now regarding this university,” says Mr. Hosni, who heads the International Association for Management of Technology. “If Egypt is going to be a prosperous country, economically and technologically, it’s going to have to rely on its own people becoming entrepreneurs, and this is essentially the goal of Nile University.”
‘A New Model’
Until the revolution, Nile University’s future looked promising. Mr. Khalil, the former chairman of the industrial-engineering department and dean of the Graduate School at the University of Miami, had helped recruit faculty members from among Egyptian researchers and professors working abroad, and set up partnerships with foreign universities such as Imperial College London and Carnegie Mellon and with businesses such as Intel, Google, and General Motors.
The university is a “a new model, a model that could actually work,” says Heba Shalaby, a graduate student and research assistant who won a scholarship to study at the university (the vast majority of students have some form of scholarship). Ms. Shalaby is part of a team developing medical imaging techniques in collaboration with a local heart-disease institute.
Nile University has programs in areas such as nanotechnology, communication and information technology, construction engineering, and transportation systems. It provides Egyptian students a unique opportunity, says Ms. Shalaby. “The whole research environment in government universities isn’t very encouraging,” she says, because of lack of money and an emphasis on teaching rather than applied research. There are an estimated 1,180 researchers per million people in Egypt, compared with 5,756 in Germany, a country with a comparable population.
The government in June increased research spending, but it still remains relatively low over all. Yet investing in science and technology is widely seen as necessary to foster local innovation, help Egypt’s economy expand, and create jobs for the millions of unemployed young people whose frustration helped fuel the uprising.
Tainted by Connections
Nile University had been scheduled to relocate to a new custom-built campus, which could accommodate its projected 5,000 to 6,000 students, at the beginning of this year. The uprising against Mr. Mubarak disrupted the move. Then, shortly after the president was toppled from power in February, Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq (who has since resigned) announced that the government would no longer be donating the 127-acre campus and buildings worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the university.
“We spent five years designing the campus for our research,” says Mr. Khalil. “All of a sudden after the revolution the government decided to take it away.”
“There was nothing wrong with the establishment of the university,” says Hatem El Bolok, the Ministry of Higher Education’s adviser on private universities. But, he says, from the beginning “there were political issues concerning, Should the government lease land to a private university? Which they tried to solve by just taking the land back.”
Ahmed Nazif, a former prime minister who recently received a one-year suspended sentence on corruption charges and is under investigation in several other cases, was one of the 55 board members of the nongovernmental organization that established the university, and an enthusiastic supporter of the project. The university’s own board comprises prominent Egyptian businessmen and former ministers, some of whom are facing trials or have left the country.
“The perception is that we were associated with the former regime because of the strong support from the prime minister,” says the university’s vice president for research, Hazem Ezzat. The Egyptian media has speculated “about Nazif’s role and his financial interests in the university. We’ve been accused of corruption.”
The university adamantly denies that charge. Unable to get the current government to reverse the decision, it has appealed to public opinion. Students and faculty have sued the government, staged protests, and created a Facebook group called “Nile University Will Survive.”
The Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education, which has oversight over the university, has expressed its support. “We would like to find a suitable solution to guarantee the continuation of this institution,” says Mr. El Bolok.
Nile University is supported through a combination of student tuition, corporate sponsorship, and philanthropic donations. But with the Egyptian economy struggling and the university’s future unclear, money has dried up.
“All pledges and commitments are frozen,” says Mr. Khalil. “You can’t run on promises.” He has made an emergency appeal. The university needs $5-million a year to continue operating. Otherwise, some students and faculty fear, the university will be taken over by private businessmen and become a for-profit institution.
Mr. Zewail, the Egyptian-American Nobel laureate, says he was contacted by Egyptian government officials shortly after the revolution and asked to revive his 10-year-old proposal for a city of science and technology that will combine a university, research centers, and a technology park. In a few months, Mr. Zewail has raised over $100-million in donations. The university that will be part of the planned city will have a different, more ambitious mission than Nile’s. “It will be a national project,” says Mr. Zewail, “not a private university. But I do feel very strongly we should help students and first-rate researchers” from the troubled university, he says, by absorbing as many of them as possible.
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