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| Cairo University dome |
I hope what I write may
receive any response from officials in charge, and not like the poetry verse
saying:
I call on all those
alive and have ears to hear.
Unfortunately, they are
dead.
I doubt those lines may
find any response from officials in charge of higher education and universities
as to what has become epidemic diseases in our tertiary education and academia
with its long-established customs and traditions laid down long ago by pioneers
and legendaries who have known true meaning and value of knowledge. Those
officials are not the only ones to blame but you can add to the list university
professors, departments’ heads, deans, chiefs and members of promotion
committees in charge of granting academic degrees of assistant professor and
professor, in addition to committees in charge of granting scientific degrees like
master and PhD.
I have received, through
my e-mail and Facebook page, tens of comments and hundreds of approving e-mails or
Likes for my last week’s article in which I apologized for my dear late friend
Dr. Ali Mabrouk[1],
the article that described the grief suffered by Egyptian citizen when
humiliated in his homeland when no rights are guaranteed to him by his
citizenship. The article described suffering of university professor when faced
by tyranny of those in charge of taking decisions in academia in Egyptian
universities.
As a result, I believe
we should bring the whole matter under light; all that has to do with our academia
in both its vertical dimension represented in assistant teachers, teachers,
assistant professors, and professors, and its horizontal one connecting all
those with their students, educational institutions’ administration, and
society as a whole. This case concerning our university and academia has a lot
of deficiencies that we should take action to stop and put on the right path,
that action that should be adopted by those feeling it’s their duty toward
themselves and their country to take action since rights turn into duties when
we stick to them and defend them.
Before I go further, I’d
like first to ask Dr. Hossam Eissa[2], the respected university
professor and national intellectual concerned with his country’s present and
future, to declare to the whole nation, in details, the reality of academia and
scientific research in Egypt. I also urge him to disclose how enormous and
serious those troubles inherent are to the extent that we may say it’s shameful
we have let things deteriorate to this level. I ask him since he – Dr. Hossam
Eissa – was in charge, for a period of time, of this very important file and I
guess he has suffered a lot in this. Dr. Hossam was not only a minister of
higher education but also a deputy prime minister.
In my opinion, the first
thing to start with is the damage inflicted with the ethics and scientific
criteria controlling academia and universities as meanings and terms have been
misinterpreted compared to when the Egyptian university and academia was first
established and developed. For example, scientific degrees granted, like
masters and PhDs, are no longer due to efforts exerted by researcher in
choosing the topic for his research or collecting data according to its field
of specialization after applying scientific discipline tools and research
criteria to reach the final formula and content for his thesis, but rather became
mostly due to the relationship between the researcher and his supervisor,
members of research discussion committee, and may be with the librarian in case
the researcher is conducting a theoretical research or the one in charge of the
laboratory in case the researcher is including some practical experiments in
his research. In the latter case, you can simply give a blind eye about
established research ethics and researcher ability to search, innovate, and
acquire adequate personal skills if that researcher is a student of X or Y, or
if he could simply manage to find a shorter path, not caring if it was more costly
in terms of ethics or money, not even if the price was his own dignity.
Such thing had its
direct devastating effects on the academic manner of those who had the degree through
this twisted way; they look fully-established professors in terms of time spent
in their claimed research to get the degree, in the number of researches
required, and also due to gaining approval of the discussion committee. But actually
they are not university professors at all in terms of their inability to
pronounce a proper Arabic sentence or writing one line without grammatical or spelling
errors, not to mention their inability to add any new to their field of
specialization. Moreover, all this had its terrible effects on the long term as
revenge spirit rules once those so-called professors reach retirement and
become professor emeritus not enjoying their past
authority anymore when their ex-students, now tenured professors, seek
vengeance for what they suffered on their hands.
Other terrible issues that
are now dealt with as non-negotiable established reality like academic
plagiarism represented in stealing part of a dissertation or even the whole of
it; they give it a nickname called quoting, not to mention running after secondments
outside university in ministries, government agencies, oil-rich Arab countries,
consulates and cultural consultancies in Egyptian embassies abroad.
I know some will say
university professors should be excused for their salaries and income are not
enough to fulfill their needs and provide for their families, not to mention
their spending to buy references and follow the latest researches in
universities of the developed world. Some, meanwhile, will claim that this is
the definite result of free education to the rest of what we all know is
nothing but nonsense. To all those I say I do not agree with you for I think
the opportunities available due to increasing salaries of teaching staff in
government universities and high-tuition fees private ones refute all your
claims, in addition to communication and information technology revolution that
enabled one to have access to unlimited sources, references, and academic
periodicals while having morning coffee; the thing that is amazing indeed.
University has failed to
play its expected role toward culture and society while gaps separating it from
its main mission; that is producing science and delivering proper education,
became immense both in size and depth. Consequently, university role in
building the nation’s present and laying foundations for its future collapsed.
There is no way to
change present or reshape the future unless we start afresh… we start defining
terms like what real education and scientific research are and how to bring
true meanings of such concepts to our Egyptian academia and universities once
again.
Again, May you rest in
peace my dear friend Ali Mabrouk, and may God bestow his mercy on you and the
poet who said:
The dead are not those
who died and rested in peace… the real dead are those breathing empty-soul ones.
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was
published in Al Ahram newspaper on March 31, 2016.
To see the Arabic
article, go to:
#alahram#ahmed_elgammal#Egypt#Egyptian_university#scientific_research#professors#ali_mabrouk#academia
[1] Ali Mabrouk: (Arabic: علي مبروك) (1961 – 2016)
was a professor of Islamic philosophy at Cairo University and one of the
prominent thinkers of Islamic heritage and contemporary Arab thought. (Source:
https://almanassa.com/ar/story/1354)
[2] Hossam Eissa: (Arabic: حسام عيسى) an
international law professor at Ain Shams University in Cairo and ex-minster in
Hazem el-Beblawi cabinet.
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