... Located in the high-tech development zone Smart Village, 20 kilometers northwest of Cairo, [just-opened Nile University] is the first Egyptian private university focusing on post-graduate studies and research. Since 1996, more than 10 private universities have been established. Four Egyptian private universities tested the terrain first; in 2002 French and German universities followed. Now, they are not only competing with the prestigious American University in Cairo (AUC) founded in 1919, but also with British and Canadian universities. A Russian and a Chinese university are in the making.

The boom of private universities in Egypt is only one of several aspects of internationalization affecting higher education in the Arab world. Many countries in the region - often considered resistant to trends of international homogenization - are drawing upon foreign expertise to build new universities as well as to modernize their public higher education systems.


... In 1995, King Hassan II of Morocco asked the World Bank to provide him with a report on social reform issues. He later used this report to circumvent the Parliament's defense of free education and impose a decision for the eventual introduction of enrolment fees. Egyptian Minister of Higher Education Moufid Shehab organized a national conference to build support for a reform program to be financed by the World Bank. The program shifts the focus in higher education reform from expanding access toward improving quality.

... While Moroccan and Egyptian policymakers use cooperation with the World Bank and other donors to break with certain old patterns such as free university education, other patterns, such as centralized university administration and lack of autonomy for universities, remain untouched.