The announcement that the number of students admitted to faculties of medicine for the 2026/2027 academic year would be held steady has reopened the debate over the capacity of university hospitals to train students. The announcement by Dr Abdel Aziz Konsowa, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, came in August 2026, after a recommendation, discussed by the coordinating committee of health sector faculties at the Supreme Council of Universities and welcomed by the Doctors’ Syndicate, to reduce admissions in proportion to training capacities and labour market needs. Between increasing the number of graduates and maintaining their competence, doctors and officials are raising questions about the actual resources available for clinical education, and about the point of expanding admissions if the causes of doctors’ emigration persist.
In a statement on 10 August 2026, during the announcement of the results of the first phase of the university admissions coordination process, the Minister of Higher Education confirmed that the number of students admitted to faculties of medicine for the new academic year would be held at the numbers admitted last year. In a later statement in August, made before President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the minister stressed that, in implementation of the president’s directives to link academic specialisations to the needs of the current and future labour market at the national, regional and international levels, the number of students admitted had been increased in a number of sectors, among them the medical and nursing sector. Combining the two statements is not enough to regard them as an announcement of an increase in admissions to medicine specifically; the reference to the medical and nursing sector covers broader specialisations, while the first statement concerned medicine. A precise comparison remains contingent on the publication of detailed numbers for each specialisation and type of university.
Since June 2026, the coordinating committee of medical sector faculties at the Supreme Council of Universities, chaired by Dr Ashraf Hatem, has put forward a recommendation to reduce the number of students admitted in the 2026/2027 coordination process by 10% at faculties of medicine, and by 20% at faculties of dentistry, pharmacy and physiotherapy, compared with the numbers admitted last year, in addition to distributing admissions so that public universities receive 60% of all health sector students, against 40% for national and private universities. These are proposed percentages for redistributing admissions, not final numbers proving that the recommendation has been implemented.
According to the coordinating committee, the recommendation comes as an attempt to restructure a system that has come to receive students in numbers proportionate neither to the faculties’ training capacities nor to labour market requirements. The recommendation was welcomed by the Doctors’ Syndicate, which appealed to the Ministry of Higher Education to adopt it, stressing that the quality of medical education is no longer an option but a national necessity, given the limited capacity of university hospitals and clinical training places.
The documents for this report did not include a unified, detailed statement from the ministry on those admitted in 2025/2026 broken down by nationality and type of university. According to statements by Dr Ashraf Hatem and Dr Alaa Balbaa, head of the physiotherapy sector at the Supreme Council of Universities, the number admitted reached 37,000 students in 2025/2026, among them 8,000 international students, in a leap that began in 2023, as the state expanded the establishment of private and national universities that include faculties of medicine. These estimates mean that the number of Egyptians is close to 29,000; these are figures attributed to the statements referred to, not the result of an independent count conducted by Zawia3.
The minimum threshold for admission to faculties of medicine for international students in 2025/2026 reached 75% at the universities of Cairo, Ain Shams, Helwan, Mansoura and Alexandria, and 70% at the remaining universities. The Prime Minister directed that more facilities and incentives be made available to international students, especially by easing the procedures for obtaining study visas in Egypt, considering this one of the tools of Egypt’s soft power, in addition to its contribution to attracting more hard currency, and the Minister of Higher Education said that there is an integrated programme aimed at increasing the number of international students by 150% within five years.
According to the fee guides on which the article relied, the costs of studying medicine in Egypt for international students range between $6,000 and $8,000 a year, in addition to a $1,500 registration fee paid by the student once upon enrolment, and universities also add a number of administrative fees. Fees vary according to the university, the academic year, scholarships and discounts, so these figures do not represent a uniform bill for every student. Alexandria University announces in its guide annual fees for medicine of $8,000 and a one-time registration fee of $1,500, along with other administrative fees; the published guide specifies 2023/2024 for the annual fees, so it is not used on its own to establish the fees of all universities in 2026. (Alexandria University guide)
Dr Abu Bakr El-Kady, secretary-general of the Federation of Medical Professions Syndicates, tells Zawia3 that the question raised by the increase in the number of students admitted to faculties of medicine is: are there hospitals and faculty members capable of training these numbers? He comments: “If the Minister of Higher Education has an answer, let him solve the current crisis of intern doctors, where a single resident trains 50 interns, in addition to the crisis of the private faculties of medicine that do not own hospitals and so contract with other hospitals to train their students, which leads to extraordinary overcrowding in training places.”
Are there hospitals and faculty members capable of training the numbers admitted?
The Crisis Is Emigration, Not a Shortage of Numbers
El-Kady adds that Egypt does not have a numerical deficit in the number of doctors, but rather suffers from the problem of their emigration, and therefore the priority should be to examine doctors’ problems and the reasons for their emigration, because without solving the root problems that lead to emigration, the doctor shortage will not be solved, however much the number of admissions increases: “When a doctor finds himself earning the minimum wage and unable to live while continuing to learn, he will have no option but to emigrate.”
In televised statements dating back to September 2025, Dr Osama Abdel Hay, head of the Doctors’ Syndicate, said that the emigration of Egypt’s doctors has become a serious phenomenon that portends a catastrophe and must be paid attention to and dealt with seriously, pointing out that, according to estimates he presented based on data from bodies including the World Health Organization, the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics, the Ministry of Health and the syndicate, about 230,000 doctors are registered with the syndicate as practising the profession, but those actually working inside Egypt number only about 95,000 doctors, a rate of 8.4 doctors per 10,000 citizens, compared with 130,000 who have emigrated abroad. The figures are approximate and differ in definition and reference period, and they cannot be treated as a complete arithmetic breakdown of all those registered with the syndicate or as a new statistic for 2026.
Abdel Hay added that there are 60,000 to 70,000 doctors in Saudi Arabia, 10,000 in the other Gulf states and 20,000 in Europe and America, pointing out that there are factors pushing doctors out of Egypt, against factors pulling them abroad.
According to an exploratory master’s study by researcher Menatallah El-Beheiry at the American University in Cairo, for which the degree was awarded in January 2025, titled “Determinants of Physician Emigration from Egypt”, Egypt graduates thousands of doctors every year and yet suffers a shortage of them within its health system; the study points to the factors pushing doctors out of Egypt, which are: weak health capacities and infrastructure, unsuitable working conditions, the poor quality of medical training, limited opportunities for medical education and development, low wages, and the absence of an appropriate system of rewards and incentives. (Menatallah El-Beheiry’s study)
On the other hand, the study addressed the factors drawing Egyptian doctors to other countries, which include: better medical training, greater educational and professional opportunities, more developed health systems, a fair system of rewards and wages, better medical and technological capacities, and a more organised working environment.
The findings presented by the study support the discussion about the limits of relying on increasing admissions and establishing new faculties to address the shortage of doctors; if the push factors related to wages, training and the working environment persist, the system may lose part of the new graduates as well. This is a conclusion drawn from reading the factors of emigration, not a quantitative estimate of the number who will emigrate or a new national census of doctors.
The study recommended establishing an updated national database containing the real number of doctors, their places of work and specialisations, the numbers of emigrants and the actual need in each specialisation, in addition to reforming the medical training system, improving the package of financial and professional benefits, trying to reverse the trend of doctors’ emigration, and conducting more studies, especially since the phenomenon of doctors’ emigration changes rapidly and requires continuous data.
In a controversial statement in 2025, Prime Minister Dr Mostafa Madbouly commented on the doctor emigration crisis, saying that there is a plan to double the number of doctors so that it reaches 29,000 doctors within 6 years, and that if 7,000 or 8,000 of them travel to gain experience and achieve a financial and economic return, we will not have a shortage of medical personnel.
Dr Ahmed Hussein, a former member of the Doctors’ Syndicate council, says that a flawed logic is being applied to the admission of students to medical sector faculties, namely that we determine the deficit in the number of doctors and admit thousands of students every year with the aim of graduating numbers that address this deficit, whereas the state is supposed to determine the capacities and absorptive capacity of the available faculties of medicine, and on that basis determine the number of general secondary certificate students to be admitted, so that we graduate competent doctors and not doctors who know nothing about medicine: “a fraudster with an official licence from the government”.
He adds to Zawia3 that the second stage, after preparing competent doctors, is for the state to examine the number of doctors needed in Egypt, expand the faculties’ capacities and establish other faculties with capacities that qualify them to graduate competent doctors, as the matter is not an arithmetic question to be addressed with numbers alone.
According to the Doctors’ Syndicate, Egypt suffers a glaring shortage of doctors, with a ratio of about 9 doctors per 10,000 people, while the global rate reaches 23 doctors per 10,000 people, and this is not due to a deficit in the number of graduates but to the heavy emigration of doctors abroad, driven by financial and professional pressures in the Egyptian work system. The comparison here is attributed to the syndicate; the global average mentioned is not a binding threshold adopted by the World Health Organization for each country, and the comparison is also affected by the definition of a practising doctor and the year of measurement.
Sufficient Numbers or Trained Cadres?
Dr Ahmed Hussein stresses that quantity can never prevail over quality, with the citizen ending up as the victim, pointing out that during the past decade what can be described as “absurdity” took place, as private faculties of medicine with neither clinics nor hospitals were established on an expanding scale, and students came to study medicine “theoretically”. To improve outward appearances, the private faculties contracted with public hospitals to train their students, while these hospitals are already packed with excess numbers and unable to train their own students, and the result is “training on paper, and the product is an uneducated student”.
According to the count on which the article relied during its preparation in August 2026, the number of faculties of medicine in Egypt reached 58, divided into 25 public faculties with affiliated hospitals (“after the cancellation of admissions at the Faqous Faculty of Medicine”), with the remaining number divided between national universities, which rely for training their students on the hospitals of the public universities from which they emerged, and private universities, a number of which still do not own a university hospital and cooperate with university hospitals to train students alongside simulation training, in addition to two faculties affiliated with two foreign universities, and one faculty affiliated with a university established under international agreements.
The former Doctors’ Syndicate council member continues that the private faculties of medicine that have affiliated training hospitals number no more than the fingers of one hand out of 12 faculties, while the remaining faculties contract with hospitals crowded with students as a manipulative way to rebut criticism.
The decrees establishing faculties of medicine on which the article relied stipulate that the start of study at a faculty be linked to the establishment and operation of its affiliated university hospital, and the Supreme Council of Universities used to grant new faculties a temporary grace period of 3 years to regularise their status and establish the university hospital in parallel with the start of the first academic years. But with some faculties failing to meet the set deadline and overcrowding occurring in training places at university hospitals, the Doctors’ Syndicate demanded that the law be applied to the faculties that had not established university hospitals despite the expiry of the 3-year grace period, and that the admission of new students to them be halted in the new academic year.
But the Minister of Higher Education responded to the syndicate’s demand with a decision not to approve the establishment of, or the start of study at, any new faculty of medicine until after the completion of a university hospital that meets all the necessary requirements and standards, so as to ensure the provision of an integrated educational and training environment and to raise the quality of medical education outcomes, without referring to the position of the faculties currently operating without a university hospital.
Unfinished Hospitals and Crowded Training Opportunities
The report, during its preparation in August 2026, identifies 12 private universities that include faculties of medicine, 4 of which have operating university hospitals according to the count in the article: October 6 University, Misr University for Science and Technology, New Giza University, which established its faculty of medicine in 2016 but whose university hospital was not opened until December 2025, in addition to Nahda University in Beni Suef, which established its faculty of medicine in 2019 and opened its university hospital on a trial basis in 2024 with a capacity of 185 beds. A distinction must be made between operating a full hospital and opening outpatient clinics or signing a training agreement, and this count does not mean that all the other faculties have exceeded the grace period granted to them.
As for the Modern University for Technology and Information, it established its faculty of medicine in 2018, and although the university’s official website indicates that there is a hospital, student complaints relayed by the article from the two years preceding its preparation say that the hospital has not yet operated, as the university directed intern students (the first and second cohorts) to train at Kasr Al-Ainy and Demerdash hospitals, affiliated with Cairo and Ain Shams universities, for a fee exceeding EGP 100,000 a year. These are complaints attributed to the students, and the presence of the hospital’s name on the university’s website alone neither proves its level of operation nor refutes what they relate about the training places and their cost.
Likewise, the faculty of medicine at Delta University for Science and Technology was established in 2019 and the foundation stone of its hospital was laid in 2020, but up to the time the article was prepared the hospital had not been officially opened; and the faculty of medicine at Merit University was established in 2019, the construction work on its hospital has not yet been completed, and the university contracts with Sohag University hospitals to train doctors.
The same applies to the faculty of medicine at Horus University, established in 2020: a Cabinet decision stipulated that the hospital be operational by 2023 at the latest, but that year only the outpatient clinics were opened, and students still train there, along with virtual labs and Port Said University Hospital. Study also began at the faculty of medicine at Badr University in the 2019/2020 academic year, and up to the time the article was prepared the hospital had not yet been opened; the university signed cooperation agreements for student training with a large number of hospitals, foremost among them Ain Shams University hospitals.
Besides these nine faculties, there are three recently established private faculties of medicine for which the 3-year grace period for establishing and operating a university hospital has not yet passed: the faculty of medicine at Badya University, which began receiving students in 2024, signed a training cooperation protocol with Cairo University hospitals and does not yet own a hospital; the faculty of medicine at Memphis University, where study began in 2025/2026 and which contracted with Ain Shams Hospital until the construction of its university hospital is completed; and the faculty of medicine at East Capital University, which also began receiving students in 2025/2026 and has also announced the opening of the outpatient clinics of its affiliated hospital.
Dr Ahmed Hussein explains that the absorptive capacity of the university hospitals affiliated with universities does not exceed 10,000 graduates each year, and if we add the private universities that own hospitals, the number may rise to only 11,500 doctors a year, and no more than this number should be admitted.
Hussein says that faculties of medicine that do not have affiliated hospitals for training from the first year of study, as well as pathology, histology and chemistry labs, should not receive a single student, and that the students of these faculties are in reality theoretical, studying during the first and second years on non-living “models”, and in the remaining years sponging off hospitals crowded with students.
Dr Abu Bakr El-Kady agrees with Hussein, stressing that the study system at faculties of medicine (5+2), meaning five years of study and two years of internship, is extremely important, because these give the medical student the skill of dealing with and handling cases after graduation, and that good training requires a small number of students per faculty member for better understanding and comprehension; otherwise, we will end up graduating doctors unqualified to practise medicine, and we will harm the reputation of the Egyptian doctor and the health of the patient. He points to the paradox that this debate is taking place in the year in which the Kasr Al-Ainy Faculty of Medicine is preparing to celebrate its 200th anniversary as the first regular school of modern medicine in the Middle East. The Kasr Al-Ainy School of Medicine was founded in 1827, so its bicentenary falls in 2027; the reference here is to the preparations for the celebration, not to two hundred years having actually passed in 2026.
Five years of study and two years of internship, but the value of training depends on the cases, supervision and actual practice available to the student.
What Do the Training Figures Measure?
According to the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research’s review of 2025, the number of university hospitals reached 146, among them 52 specialised hospitals, contributing about 30% of all healthcare beds and 50% of intensive care beds in the government sector. As for the number of beds in these hospitals, the statistic used in the article dates back to the 2023/2024 fiscal year, when the number of beds reached 36,900. The number of hospitals and the number of beds here relate to two different periods, and do not represent a single measurement of the capacity available to train the students of a particular cohort.
The World Federation for Medical Education’s 2020 standards stress the need for sufficient and appropriate resources for clinical training, including a variety of cases and practice settings and the availability of supervision and educational opportunities. The paragraph on clinical training resources does not set a fixed global ratio of beds per student. These are guiding standards for improving education, not an Egyptian law or a substitute for the accreditation requirements of each programme. The article also points to the importance of adequate training facilities in the Egyptian Board, while distinguishing between specialised postgraduate training and basic university education, as it should not be assumed that the capacity available for both is identical. (WFME standards for basic medical education, 2020)
In press statements, Dr Ashraf Hatem, head of the coordinating committee of medical sector faculties, said that a study conducted in 2023 revealed that the Egyptian labour market needs only about 15,000 doctors, and that training capacity at university hospitals ranges from 12,000 to 16,000 beds; by calculating bed rotation rates among students, this capacity can accommodate 22,000 to 24,000 students at most, and the state seeks to raise absorptive capacity to more than 30,000 students within a year or two, after accrediting many other health bodies, such as Ministry of Health hospitals, teaching hospitals, the General Secretariat of Specialised Medical Centres, the Egypt Healthcare Authority, and the armed forces and police hospitals, and this is the reason for the proposal to reduce the number admitted to faculties of medicine by 10%. These estimates differ from Hussein’s estimate because the scope of the calculation and the assumptions about bed availability and training rotation are not the same. Moreover, the total number of beds does not automatically equal the number of beds allocated for training or the number of clinical opportunities available to each student.
In June 2026, Shatby University Hospital in Alexandria witnessed an incident in which intern doctors were barred from entering the operating theatres, and when the Doctors’ Syndicate contacted officials, they explained that doctors from outside the accredited training programme, who were not registered or officially referred for training at Alexandria’s university hospitals, had been detected. At the time, the syndicate stressed that the incident reveals the danger of continuing to increase the number of students and graduates without a parallel expansion of university hospitals and clinical training places, which leads to an overcrowding of trainees beyond the absorptive capacity of medical and educational institutions and represents a real threat to the quality of medical education and the standard of the Egyptian doctor, renewing its demands that no new faculties of medicine be established and that the admission of new students be halted at faculties whose 3-year grace period for establishing their own hospital has expired without their complying.
Pressure Extending to Other Medical Specialisations
Dr Abu Bakr El-Kady points to the disaster of the rising number of students admitted to the faculties of pharmacy, physiotherapy and dentistry, to the extent that it prompted the Ministry of Health to switch to needs-based assignment for the graduates of these faculties, starting with the 2025 cohort; the Egyptian Health Council also decided to hold an examination for graduates of physiotherapy faculties before granting them a licence to practise the profession, after the number of physiotherapy faculties reached 74. What is meant here is a change in the rule for distributing assignments, not the cancellation of assignment for all graduates of these specialisations without exception.
As for faculties of dentistry, according to the figures presented by the syndicate, their number has reached 85, and the General Syndicate of Dentists demanded that the Ministry of Higher Education halt the establishment of new faculties, pointing out that the number of dentists in Egypt has exceeded 108,000, in addition to more than 70,000 students at Egyptian universities and about 7,000 students studying abroad, numbers that exceed the needs of the labour market and threaten members of the profession with unemployment, following the decision on needs-based assignment, which leads to only hundreds being assigned out of thousands of graduates every year.
According to the data and syndicate statements on which the article relied, the same thing happened with pharmacy faculties, whose number reaches 74, whether public, private, national or of a special nature, graduating about 25,000 students a year; the number of pharmacists in Egypt has reached 330,000, a rate of 32 pharmacists per 10,000 people, which the Pharmacists Syndicate described as the highest rate of pharmacists in the world. The report relays this description as attributed to the syndicate, without regarding it as an international ranking that has been independently checked.
El-Kady stresses that what happened with the other medical sector faculties must not be repeated with faculties of medicine, as a graduate of these faculties cannot begin working without good training, and cannot remain without work in public hospitals for a year or two before being needed and assigned, given the special nature of this profession, which requires continuous education and work.
Admission from 50%: A Dispute over Standards
El-Kady addresses another of the problems related to the admission standards of faculties of medicine, namely the low admission scores at some faculties, such as the international faculties that accept students who scored 50%, pointing out that this is unacceptable because a medical student must have special qualities, as he will spend the rest of his life in continuous education, so how can weak students be admitted to carry out this task?
He points out that the Doctors’ Syndicate does not have the right to refuse to register a student who graduated from these faculties, as long as the Supreme Council of Universities recognises the university from which he graduated, but a warning must be sounded about the coming disaster if this situation continues.
The Minister of Higher Education commented on the admission of students with 50% to faculties of medicine, saying that branches of foreign universities have a special law that has been applied for some time, and that the admission rules at the affiliated faculties are subject to standards specific to the parent university that established the branch.
The minister added, in televised statements, that the ministry is currently working on setting admission standards for certain specialisations, consistent with our other standards in the various sectors, so that there is no conflict and the graduate is at the required level, sending a message to the Doctors’ Syndicate: “We are keen on the standard of the graduate and are doing everything we can to achieve that, and soon we will have a way out to commit to this framework in order to preserve the standard of our graduates and the reputation of the Egyptian doctor.”
For its part, the Doctors’ Syndicate explained that two faculties affiliated with an international university belonging to an Eastern European country accept students with scores starting from 50%, rejecting the justification that the admission rules in the country to which the university belongs do not require a minimum score similar to the one in force in Egypt, and stressing that the “international” label must not become a gateway to establishing an educational system with admission rules separate from the rules in force in the country on whose territory it operates, describing the matter as “a state within the state”.
According to the Minister of Higher Education, the minimum admission threshold for public faculties of medicine stopped at a general secondary certificate score of 94%, at 85% for national universities and at 81% for private universities, while the 50% figure relates to the two faculties referred to in the syndicate’s complaint and cannot be generalised to all branches of foreign universities. A distinction should also be made between the minimum for applying and the level at which actual admission ends, and between holders of the Egyptian general secondary certificate and of equivalent Arab and foreign certificates; each category has rules that may differ.
While preparing the article, Zawia3 tried to contact Dr Ashraf Hatem for comment on the holding steady of the number of students admitted to faculties of medicine despite the coordinating committee’s recommendation, but to no avail. For his part, Dr Osama Abdel Hay, head of the Doctors’ Syndicate, tells Zawia3 that the Doctors’ Syndicate has 4 main demands: linking admission to faculties of medicine to the absorptive capacity of faculties and hospitals, not admitting new students at universities that do not own university hospitals, not admitting students to faculties of medicine with a score of 50%, and the commitment of private and national universities to the numbers set for them.
