São Paulo – Two Egyptian education specialists will speak at an international conference on the topic next Monday (21st) and Tuesday (22nd) in Rio de Janeiro. Held by the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (ABC) and Brazil’s Institute for Labor and Society Studies, the “International Seminar on Higher Education Policies in Developing Countries” will feature 140 to 150 people, including researchers, academics, government officials and education professionals from Brazil and other countries.
The primary focus of the seminar is a comparative study of higher education in the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). The study has been worked into a book released this year in the Netherlands by the publisher Springer. The seminar will present and discuss the results of the study, which addresses the development, policies and outlook or higher education in the BRICS and their implications to the developing world at large. Additionally, outlines will be given of the higher education scenarios in some countries, like Egypt.
The speaker discussing Egypt will be Mohsen Elmahdy Said. Alongside other specialists, he will sit in a panel on the role regional and national governments play in higher education policies and implementation, on the 21st at 11 am. Said is an Applied Mechanics professor at the Department of Design and Production of Cairo University and holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Imperial College of Science and Technology at the University of London. Said has held national and international positions in the education field and played a major role in Egypt’s higher education reform over the past decade.
“The countries have similar situations,” says the event’s organizer and ABC full member Simon Schwartzman, citing issues and problems in higher education, such as the inclusion of different social groups, budget and quality. For this reason, in addition to the countries covered by the study published by Springer, the scenarios in other countries will also be touched upon.
Also from Egypt, apart from Said, Moushira Elgeziri will also participate in the meeting. She works with higher education-related issues at the Ford Foundation’s Cairo office. The Foundation is the event’s sponsor. Elgeziri works to promote social justice at higher education institutions across the Middle East and North Africa, seeking learning opportunities and public involvement from scholars to influence social policies. She also does research into education, female employment and social sciences in the Arab world.
Besides Egypt, the seminar will feature participants from countries like South Africa, Russia, Canada, Finland, China, India, Mexico and Mozambique. The book on which the event is based was published in English under the title “Higher Education in the BRICS Countries – Investigating the Pact between Higher Education and Society” and edited by Simon Schwartzman, Rómulo Pinheiro, from the University of Agder, in Norway, and Pundy Pillay, from the University of the Witwatersrand, in South Africa. They are also the seminar’s organizers.
The Brazilian minister of Education, Renato Janine Ribeiro, is slated to attend the event’s opening, the organizers have reported.
International Seminar on Higher Education Policies in Developing Countries
September 21st and 22nd, 2015
Academia Brasileira de Ciências (Brazilian Academy of Sciences)
Rua Anfilófio de Carvalho, 29, 3rd floor, Downtown – Rio de Janeiro – Rio de Janeiro
Additional information: fwolter@abc.org.br or +55 (21) 3907-8128
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
