Postgraduate studies in Egypt do not exist. They begin with a preliminary year that makes no sense except for the universities to collect tuition from students, and for the professors to practice their academic adolescence on them (some professors are respectable, but some do not even show up for the lectures).
During the academic year of 2013-2014, 137,000 students applied for a master's degree and 47,000 applied for a Ph.D. (35,000 more than the previous year, and 77,000 more than the year before).
Out of those, 15,000 have received a master's degree and 6,000 have received a Ph.D. (21,000 new people added to the academic community). In other words, there were 21,000 new theses that year, mostly puffed up with unnecessary jargon, as thesis in Egypt come in hundreds of pages. This means that there were about 400 tons of knowledge added to the pool that year.
For example, let's take a look at a thesis about the art of baloney. It would start with the definition of baloney. Then it would tackle the difference between the baloney of the people of the Mediterranean and that of the people of the north. Then it would move to explain the difference between bearded and unbearded baloney, until it arrives at the relationship between baloney and the greenhouse effect.
Unfortunately, the majority of dissertations in Egypt are but a copy of other theses written before, since we seem to prefer to reuse old products rather than create new ones.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
