Tuition is only the beginning. Registration, courses, language tests, printing and thesis defences create an expanding bill, while administrative delays and uneven supervision can consume years of a researcher's life.
On Facebook, Mohamed Ibrahim Al-Ashmawy, a professor of Hadith at Al-Azhar University, advised students not to waste their lives pursuing postgraduate diplomas, master's degrees and doctorates. Such qualifications, he argued, had lost their significance in the conditions students face. His remarks raise questions about the cost and value of further study. Yet the researchers interviewed for this report describe differing experiences, rather than a single answer that applies to everyone.
On 5 August 2026, Al-Azhar University outlined increased postgraduate fees for the 2026/2027 academic year. It said the decision had been approved in January and ratified by the Supreme Council of Al-Azhar, and that the fees had not risen since 2014. The increase prompted students to call for a reduction.
On 25 August 2026, the university announced a 50% reduction in the new fees for its Sharia, Arabic and theoretical faculties, citing students' circumstances and support for scientific research. The reduction nevertheless did not restore the earlier fee levels.
Article 169 of Egypt's Universities Organisation Law, Law No. 49 of 1972, provides for free education for Egyptian citizens at the different university stages. With an exception concerning overseas branches of universities governed by the law, it requires non-Egyptian students to pay the tuition specified in the executive regulations, with the proceeds assigned to educational services at their university. It also provides for student-service charges prescribed by those regulations, with each charge's proceeds assigned to the service for which it is collected. This provision concerns universities governed by that law. Al-Azhar has a separate legislative framework under Law No. 103 of 1961, so the same provisions cannot automatically be assumed to apply to it.
Lawyer Bassam Abu Gazia tells Zawia3 that current postgraduate charges conflict with two central elements of Article 169: free education for Egyptian citizens, and the requirement to allocate each charge to the service for which it is collected. This is the lawyer's legal assessment, rather than a court ruling invalidating every charge described by the interviewees.
Postgraduate fees have risen at different institutions over the years. Tanta University's published records document a 27 March 2014 decision increasing postgraduate fees in its Faculty of Nursing, followed by a June decision raising fees in its Faculty of Commerce. A 2016 example concerning Ain Shams University's Faculty of Commerce requires a distinction: the accompanying source reports higher undergraduate English-section tuition, not a verified September increase in postgraduate fees. The referenced Kafrelsheikh University page also does not provide sufficient accessible detail to verify the decision attributed to December 2016 concerning 2017/2018 fees. In October 2018, Matrouh University announced a postgraduate fee reduction following student appeals. Contemporary coverage described it as 40%, but the credit-hour price specified in that report fell from EGP 300 to EGP 200, a reduction of approximately 33.3%. The distinction between an announcement's headline and the particular fee being calculated therefore matters.
Al-Azhar's decision is among the more recent changes discussed in this report. Diploma fees rose from EGP 750 to EGP 4,000, master's fees from EGP 1,500 to EGP 5,000, and doctoral fees from EGP 2,000 to EGP 7,000, before the university reduced the new charges by 50% for the Sharia, Arabic and theoretical faculties.
The 2018 total follows Table 189 of CAPMAS’s 2018 bulletin (240,335). Table 162 in the same bulletin gives 238,963 across the three degrees. Both original figures are retained; the difference is in the source tables.
An earlier Zawia3 report examined declining interest in postgraduate education amid rising master's and doctoral costs, difficulties combining work and study, limited employment prospects after graduation, and administrative and academic obstacles. Using official figures for the period it covered, that report described a decline in postgraduate degrees awarded. Specialists linked reluctance to continue studying to higher costs, limited career returns and the emigration of skilled people. A decline during that earlier period does not mean the trend necessarily continued: CAPMAS subsequently reported approximately 122,900 postgraduate qualifications awarded in 2024, up from 100,500 in 2023, an increase of 22.2%. These are qualifications awarded, distinct from the enrolment figures in the charts.
The costs behind the qualification
The cost of a master's degree extends well beyond tuition, says a master's researcher who asked not to be named. Speaking to Zawia3, he lists research-proposal registration, training courses, language and digital-transformation tests, and other expenses that emerge while a thesis is being prepared and defended.
At a postgraduate institute affiliated with a public university, he says, basic tuition is approximately EGP 2,000 per term. Registering his research proposal cost EGP 5,000: about EGP 3,800 for registration itself and EGP 1,200 for other items associated with the procedure.
Among the requirements was an English-language test that the researcher calls TOEFL. He says his first attempt in 2022 cost about EGP 1,200, plus EGP 170 for a book. When the certificate expired, he had to sit the test again, paying another EGP 1,200 and EGP 200 for the book. In the figures he provides, the book's price increased by EGP 30 while the examination fee remained unchanged. These are the costs of the particular experience he describes, not a general price list for all language tests or the international examination at every testing centre.
The researcher says his postgraduate programme also required courses in Arabic, scientific research, statistics, entrepreneurship and international publishing, among other subjects. Each course cost between EGP 100 and EGP 150.
He considers the digital-transformation course the most important of the courses he took. It cost EGP 500 and required serious preparation for its examination. By comparison, he says, he derived little benefit from several of the other courses.
Adding the expenses together left him facing numerous separate charges on top of tuition. Further official and informal costs remained, including procedures after the thesis was completed, arrangements for the examination committee and the defence itself.
The speaker’s voice has been altered for protection.
Paying to defend a thesis
For Aya Ehab, who holds a master's degree, postgraduate study brought financial and organisational burdens far beyond ordinary tuition. She tells Zawia3 that the day of her thesis defence alone cost approximately EGP 10,000, excluding other expenses.
What surprised her most was having to reserve a room inside the university for the defence. Why, she asks, must researchers rent a room in their own university? According to her account, the least expensive room cost approximately EGP 1,000, larger rooms exceeded EGP 2,000, and the best-equipped rooms cost between EGP 5,000 and EGP 7,000.
The room was only one item. Ehab lists academic gowns for the examining committee and the researcher, room preparations, a banner and flowers. Researchers may also choose to pay for bottled water, sweets or canned drinks for guests. Her account therefore combines arrangements she describes as required with personal hospitality choices; not every item on the list is a formally prescribed university fee.
Those expenses did not include the thesis copies she supplied to the examiners, transport or clothing. They came, she says, at a time when her financial circumstances and work commitments were already difficult. She felt she had little choice but to bear the costs, and believes some were associated with services the university should provide.
Ehab also describes paying for a defence banner in a specified design and colour scheme. She says new university rules made the banner, and its publication on the faculty's website or official page, compulsory. In her experience, the cost doubled when an optional item became a requirement. An independent copy of the new regulation she describes was not available to verify that obligation.
The published postgraduate rules referenced in this report do not establish a uniform requirement for every researcher to print a defence banner or publish it on a faculty website. A researcher may nevertheless experience a repeatedly imposed practice as a practical condition for completing the defence. That differs from a general legal obligation: repetition alone does not establish a binding rule, and the relevant institution's decision must be examined.
Ehab does not consider some courses she took, including English and scientific analysis, prohibitively expensive. Her concern is how closely their content matches researchers' needs. She says a digital-transformation course costing EGP 1,000 covered seven modules, some genuinely useful, while other material had little connection to her research.
Skills such as Word and Excel are useful, she says, but requiring everyone to study the same content overlooks disciplinary differences. A researcher in a Faculty of Arts may need different support from a student in another field. She would prefer universities to identify what each discipline requires and provide relevant training, instead of imposing a uniform package on everyone.
Enrolled students, not qualifications awarded. The 2018 degree totals follow CAPMAS Table 162; the discrepancy with Table 189 is explained above. The 2024 degree figures sum to 232,299, rounded to 232.3 thousand in the official release.
Beyond the financial burden
Ehab stresses that students' difficulties also concern the quality of supervision and follow-up. She has seen women researchers receive insufficient attention from their supervisors. One friend, she says, had two supervisors but received little assistance while preparing her thesis, which was not reviewed before the defence. This is Ehab's account of her friend's experience.
She calls for greater flexibility towards postgraduate students, many of whom work while studying and have family responsibilities. Some lectures, she says, are scheduled very early to suit faculty members without sufficient consideration for employed researchers. More suitable times, including days off work, could make programmes easier to combine with those commitments.
The researcher who requested anonymity similarly describes problems extending beyond money to academic procedures, choosing a thesis topic and obtaining supervision. A lack of guidance from professors, he says, can delay a student's progress.
In his account, that gap can push students towards unofficial businesses offering help with research proposals and theses in return for large payments. He says some use artificial-intelligence tools to prepare work that subsequently undermines students before seminar committees, leaving them with another financial burden. This remains his account of the services he encountered. It does not establish that all academic-support services operate that way, or make outsourcing a thesis an acceptable substitute for original research.
The speaker’s voice has been altered for protection.
The Nature Index dataset used for this report shows a measurable Egyptian presence in international research. Researchers affiliated with Egypt were associated with 366 articles in journals tracked by the index between May 2025 and April 2026. Egypt ranked 46th globally and second in Africa by Share, a metric that allocates contributions to jointly authored research among researchers and institutions. The index belongs to Springer Nature, but it does not measure publication in Nature magazine alone or cover Egypt's entire scientific output. Its reporting window also moves over time. This report retains the original period rather than mixing it with newer figures.
Paying to get through
Nadia Mahmoud says that in 2016, her thesis supervisor in the psychology department of a public university's Faculty of Arts asked her to give him two iPhones. According to her testimony to Zawia3, he told her she would not get beyond the thesis-preparation stage without providing the gift.
Mahmoud came from a financially comfortable family and says she could have found the EGP 30,000 required at the time. She nevertheless refused. In her account, she could not accept obtaining an academic qualification through what she regarded as a bribe.
Saeed Zakaria, who obtained a master's degree in Arabic from a public university's Faculty of Arts, gives a different account. He says he felt compelled to pay EGP 20,000 to his supervisor so that matters would proceed. He believes similar practices exist with some supervisors elsewhere. His account describes his experience and impression: the payment was not independently verified, and his testimony alone cannot establish an allegation against universities or supervisors generally.
Zakaria tells Zawia3 that the supervisor did not ask him directly, instead using a university postgraduate-administration employee as an intermediary. He says he paid before his defence in late 2025. The examining committee subsequently awarded the thesis distinction with honours and recommended printing it and exchanging it between universities. He adds that the defence day alone cost him EGP 38,000, including preparations and flowers. Of that amount, EGP 14,000 went on a restaurant lunch for the committee after the defence.
A separate case dates to 2017, when recordings attributed to Yassin Lashin, a professor at Cairo University's Faculty of Mass Communication and, according to contemporary coverage, head of the 30 June Party, circulated online. Coverage included allegations of sexual blackmail and demands for money or gifts. Some reports alleged that a woman was threatened with a weapon and forced to undress, while accounts differed over whether she was a student. Lashin denied the accusations at the time and described the coverage as a campaign against him. These details are therefore presented as allegations and contemporary press accounts, rather than facts established by a criminal judgment in the sources reviewed for this report.
On 5 July 2019, Cairo University's disciplinary council's decision to dismiss Lashin was announced, approximately two years after the investigations began. Press reports quoting the university's statement said the decision followed its investigation into accusations of conduct violating university values and traditions. This was a university disciplinary decision, and should not be presented as a criminal conviction establishing every detail carried in the coverage.
The original selection contains 90 institutions. Source ranks, including ties and gaps, are retained; this is not a claim to reproduce every institution in the current live list.
Gomaa, who holds a master's degree from a public university, tells Zawia3 that university fees were only part of the cost. He describes other expenses as substantial financial pressure, particularly during thesis preparation and on the day of the defence.
Administrative processes brought additional difficulties, he says: delayed transactions, unavailable electronic systems and postponed paperwork. In his experience, those obstacles led researchers to intermediaries who could accelerate procedures in return for informal gifts or payments. He explicitly says such practices do not apply to every faculty member.
Gomaa's defence-day expenses included hiring and preparing a room, transport for committee members, lunches, drinks, gowns and flowers. He says the room alone cost EGP 3,000, but that he was asked to sign a statement describing the payment as a donation to the faculty rather than rent. In total, he puts the day's expenses above EGP 40,000, including EGP 15,000 for the examining committee's lunch.
His experience of supervisors varied. Some, he says, asked for no payment for the support they provided, while others set what he describes as a price for finishing a thesis and obtaining the degree. He criticises an approach that turns postgraduate research into administrative requirements to be completed, with paperwork replacing a contribution to knowledge. These remain allegations and observations attributed to him, rather than a judgment on all faculty members or a statistical measure of the prevalence of such practices.
The speaker’s voice has been altered for protection.
Gomaa also believes that universities' interest in international researchers paying fees in dollars can reduce their attention to Egyptian students. In his view, the currency becomes more important than the researcher. This is his interpretation of his experience, not a verified university policy or a finding based on a comparative assessment of how Egyptian and international students are treated.
Is postgraduate study worth the effort?
Despite her criticisms, Ehab rejects the idea that a master's degree or doctorate is pointless. She describes her own experience as valuable academically and professionally. Her master's opened new opportunities in research, and she benefited from her supervisor and the work she encountered during her studies. In her view, the value of the experience also depends on whether a researcher seeks only a certificate or wants to learn and develop.
She hopes for better organisation, greater support and arrangements that suit students who work. Egyptian universities, she says, have capable academics. Making better use of that expertise requires clearer rules and procedures that reduce the financial and time burdens, so that a qualification becomes a meaningful stage of learning and research rather than simply the acquisition of a certificate.
Article Count for ten institutions in the original May 2025 to April 2026 dataset. This is distinct from Share, and refers to the journals tracked by the index, not only Nature.
The anonymous researcher believes postgraduate qualifications remain worthwhile for some groups, particularly employees whose workplaces offer additional payments for advanced degrees. He cites EGP 350 for a master's qualification and EGP 700 for a doctorate, and regards the financial incentive as the only reason employees enrol. Those amounts describe the incentives he knows in his employment context, not uniform statutory payments for every employee. His view of motivation is also his own, and differs from Ehab's account of the value of learning and research.
An academic who asked not to be named tells Zawia3 that researchers can spend a long time registering their thesis proposals, obtaining approvals, corresponding with different offices and completing procedures. Slow transactions and limited use of technology in managing postgraduate records, the academic says, extend that process.
Experiences differ between departments and supervisors. The academic describes inadequate supervision, limited time for researchers and insufficient guidance when choosing a research topic. Theses can take years and substantial spending yet struggle to find practical application. The research literature cited in this report discusses supervision and the social use of research, but each study's findings remain bounded by its methodology and sample. They do not establish that every thesis fails to be applied.
The academic also argues that researchers bear the cost of producing work intended to serve knowledge and society despite limited funding and material or professional incentives. Some customary university practices, the academic says, become practical obligations without an explicit regulatory requirement. A 2024 study of postgraduate education at Aswan University examined the views of a sample of 865 students. Its findings must be read within that setting, rather than automatically generalised to all Egyptian universities.
Other studies discuss differences between examiners' judgments and assessment criteria, and how those differences may delay completion or produce uneven evaluation. They also examine difficulties accessing databases, references and paid field data, which can increase research costs and prolong projects. Further concerns include limited room for creative thinking, independence and scholarly dialogue, and curricula that do not sufficiently prepare students for independent research. The literature used here includes different periods, universities and countries. It offers explanatory context, rather than a single current survey of every Egyptian higher-education institution.
Egyptian scientist Essam Heggy tells Zawia3 that restricting the space for scientific research, preventing researchers from choosing their own topics and keeping them away from emerging developments can have devastating consequences for scientific work. His warning concerns the conditions that allow research to remain open, relevant and intellectually productive.
The issue extends beyond Al-Ashmawy's advice not to spend a lifetime on postgraduate study. Some researchers feel their money and time are consumed by procedures; others describe genuine academic and professional benefits. The question is what makes those benefits possible: how can universities ensure that fees, effort and supervision produce useful knowledge, rather than a journey that ends with the award of a certificate?
