Education and the labour force
The UN Human Development Report 2000 ranked Egypt at 119, far behind
other Middle Eastern countries, such as Israel (23), Lebanon (82) and Iran
(97). This was mainly on account of Egypt’s deficiencies in primary educa-
tion. The adult illiteracy rate is also relatively high (see below). Undoubtedly,
the government will have to exert greater efforts to ensure primary educa-
tion for all children of school age. If Egypt is to take part in the process
of economic globalization, the quality of school education has to be raised.
At present there exists an imbalance in the distribution of budget resources
between primary and university education, with the latter being inflated at
the expense of the former. With 1.72 million students enrolled in higher and
university education in 2000/01 (Ministry of Information 2002a) and about
300,000 new university graduates annually, the first two decades of the new
millennium will witness a huge increase in the number of university gradu-
ates, most of whom will either not find jobs or will be absorbed by the civil
service, contributing further to disguised unemployment. If its well-qualified
manpower is to make Egypt competitive in the region, especially in the areas
of medicine and pharmacology, banking, tourism, law, engineering and infor-
mation technology, this requires greater attention to the quality rather than
to the quantity of higher education.