26% increase in Egyptian students pursuing postgraduate studies in US: Erudera

Nehal Samir
3 Min Read

The number of Egyptian students who pursue postgraduate studies in the United States during the last decade increased by 26%, Higher education expert at Erudera, Gent Ukehajdaraj, told Daily News Egypt.

He added that the number of students from Egypt in the US who pursue postgraduate studies has increased from 1,281 in the 2010/11 academic year to reach 1,615 students during 2019/20.

Meanwhile, the United States has been one of the most popular places among Egyptian students to pursue higher education throughout the years, marking a notable increase of 76 percent in number of these students over a decade, according to official statistics from the US Department of Education provided by Erudera, world’s first education search platform backed by AI.

Despite the US popularity as a study destination, statistics have shown that a slight decrease in the number of Egyptian students in the US was observed between 2016/17 and 2018/19, as from 3715 students, the number decreased to 3675.

Exploring further, data reveals that back in the mid-fifties, there were only 351 Egyptians pursuing studies in the US, which marked a large increase of 586 percent in the mid-eighties, with a total of 2410 students enrolled in US higher education at the time.

Since the 1984/85 academic year, the number of Egyptian students in the US per year until 2012/13 increased by only 200, in which year a total of 2608 students were studying in the country.

In spite of the US hosting nearly 4,000 Egyptian students during 2019/20, the country has welcomed a quite small number of students from Egypt’s neighbor country Libya. There were only 720 students from Libya in the US during the 2019/20 academic year. Differently, 2226 students from Egypt’s land frontier to northeast, Israel, studied in the US during the last academic year. 

On the other hand, with the USAID-funded Public University Scholarships program through the US-Egypt Higher Education Initiative, the United States also aims to contribute to the workforce in Egypt in those sectors important for the country’s economic development.

The scholarship is granted to high school graduates to attend excellence programs at public universities in parallel with other activities, including leadership training, career planning, internship, community service, and study abroad activities.

Universities of Cairo, Ain Shams, Assuit, Mansoura, and Alexandria are among universities which students receiving this scholarship can attend. 

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