Tuition Fees Spike Following Administrative Court Ruling
@ImKarimKop
On March 17, the Board of Trustees (BoT) approved removing the US dollars percentage from the tuition fees and fully expressing it in Egyptian pounds for the following academic year.
The decision came a week after Egypt’s Administrative Court ruling, which ordered the administration to accept tuition payment in pounds instead of US dollars.
“The Student Union (SU) is currently working with the parents to make sure that the Administrative Court’s decision is made clear to the administration,” Chair of Political Representation and SU Presidential candidate Mohamed Gadalla told The Caravan.
The new rate will equalize fees among currently enrolled and incoming classes, creating a simpler formula of a standard per credit rate and removing discrepancies among different cohorts of students.
Tuition fees currently stand at EGP 9,800 per credit, amounting to EGP 147,000 for the standard 15-credit semester.
In 2014, the BoT decided that 50 percent of the tuition is to be calculated in US dollars, allowing Egyptian students to pay the dollars portion in the Egyptian equivalent set by the Central Bank.
However, following the devaluation of the pound in November, tuition increased by about 30 percent.
“The Court’s decision says that there should not be a massive discrepancy in the percentage increase from Fall 2016 to Fall 2017, but the current increase is at 100%” Gadalla added.
In a official statement, Executive Vice President for Administration and Finance Brian MacDougall said that AUC aims to meet this commitment by increasing financial aid for students in good academic standing during the current academic year.
“In anticipation of continuing and possibly increased need, the University has substantially increased its financial aid and scholarships budget for the 2017-2018 academic year,” read the statement.
In addition, the Office of Administration and Finance is willing to increase aid starting next year.
“One of the things that we have committed to do, and our BoT has supported, is that when money gets freed up from graduating students who have been formerly on achievement scholarships, the money released gets moved to need-based financial aid and that’s something we are doing regularly,” MacDougall told The Caravan.
The BoT assured that among the University’s main goals following the devaluation of the pound is to not lose any currently enrolled students with a good academic standing due to an inability to meet the increase in tuition.
“In terms of the Spring semester, we target 250 new students and the actual intake was 291 and these are people who are coming after the flotation,” he added.
MacDougall also told The Caravan that the administration plans to accept 1,000 new students for the Fall semester.
“Our conversations with the administration lead us to believe that the decision to increase tuition fees is not necessarily connected with the ruling, seeing how the university has not yet received the Court’s recommendations,” said Gadalla.
Concerns regarding faculty salaries were also raised following the decision.
The salaries of all faculty members, except for the adjunct, are expressed in USD. However, they only receive 70 percent of them in that currency – the remaining 30 percent is received in EGP.
According to MacDougall, only the staff, who receive their salaries entirely in EGP, were affected by the devaluation of the pound.
The BoT has allowed “special allowances” to account for such fluctuations and alterations in the purchasing power of the EGP, MacDougall told The Caravan.
“One of the things the government is committed to do is to have a true Egyptian national currency, which means full convertability, which is how we’re going forward; with the expectation that while we are expressing tuition in EGP, we will trade pounds for dollars based on our need,” he added.
“We are definitely happy with this positive decision, knowing that our efforts did not go to waste,” said Parents Association President Aliaa Abdel Ghaffar.
In an official statement, AUC President Francis J. Ricciardone expressed his delight over the new policy, confirming that the right decision was made.
The decision, however, does not affect international students, who are still required to pay their full tuition in USD.
