Pathways to Higher Education (PHE/EG) is a soft-skills oriented training program funded by Ford Foundation in fourteen different countries across the globe, and implemented in Egypt by Cairo University represented by CAPSCU in three phases over a period of ten years, starting 2002 through 2012. The main objectives of PHE/EG is to enhance the skills of socially disadvantaged (underprivileged) groups among the university students and graduates, focusing on students and graduates of humanities and social sciences specializations preserving gender equal opportunity, with a primary view to improving their chances of access to postgraduate studies, enhancing their prospects to benefit from any scholarships programs, and/or maximizing their potential for acquiring better employment opportunities. These developmental issues are in-line with the overall objectives and reform strategy of the Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) that is being implemented in phases by the Projects Management Unit (PMU/MOHE).To achieve an effective outreach, CAPSCU established partnerships with counterpart stakeholders concerned with skills-oriented human resources capacity building. One of the partners is the Social Fund for Development (SFD)] a government funding mechanism that provides support for graduates to start their own businesses. In addition, the main beneficiaries are the ten Egyptian public universities participating in Phase-I & Phase-II of the PHE/EG project, namely Cairo, Ain-Shams, Assiut, Helwan, Minia, South Valley, Fayoum, Beni-Suef, Benha and Suhag, as well as the remaining eight of the existing eighteen public universities that will participate in Phase-III, namely, Alexandria, Mansoura, Zagazig, Menoufia, Tanta, Suez Canal, Kafr El-Sheikh, Port Said and Damanhoor.The Management Team of PHE/EG project established a management network infrastructure/mechanism that allows for the concurrent implementation of the PHE/EG training programs in all public universities, biannually during mid-term and summer holidays. This entails having a project coordinator in each university working closely with the PHE/EG management team to cater for all logistical matters for running the training programs, including; interviews of applicants that meet the preliminary online screening criteria, providing them with automated online assessment tests and selecting the successful applicants for the training programs. In addition, project coordinators, being senior faculty members in their respective universities, were able to provide job opportunities to some of the distinguished trainees.
The project coordinators in universities and the govererates
The performance of PHE/EG project has been recently assessed during the final stages of the implementation of Phase-II by a professional external evaluator commissioned through the Ford Foundation Headquarters office in New York City, over a prolonged period of time following TQM methodology, to ensure that the project has achieved its developmental objectives. The outcome of the assessment was the approval of the Ford Foundation Headquarters to continue funding Phase-III of the project, with Egypt being at the forefront of only four countries, out of the fourteen, selected to continue implementation reaching an aggregate period of ten years, which the longest period of any project funded by the foundation.
PHE/EG training programs developed during the Phase-I of the project had continuous and periodic revisions based on training outcomes. Monitoring and evaluation processes include feedback from trainees, trainers, steering committee and experts. This element of flexibility has proved to be instrumental in the enhancement of training quality, management and coordination. Complete details about the project achievements in Phase-I and Phase-II are hosted on Pathways website: http://www.pathways.cu.edu.eg/The following training programs were developed and implemented since the startup of project implementation in September 2002:
By the end of Phase-II, the project was able to develop the capacity of 880 trainers, mainly faculty members from the participating universities, and to commission them to train 14537 trainees in 25 training programs conducted in 171 training batches, and to develop and disseminate 39 books in Arabic and English, both in hard and electronically published soft copies. The materials used in thirteen training programs were internationally certified by the ICBT (International Board of Certified Trainers) through its newly established branch in Egypt NCFLD (National Center for Faculty Leadership Development) that is responsible for the certification process in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. The materials used in the rest of the training programs are in the pipeline of being internationally certified as well.
The following table shows the project trainees in seven different programs according to their respective universities. Nearly 80% of the trainees are from humanities and social sciences specializations, with almost half of which (49.7%) are females.
| University | BBSA | ERS | TOT | DLS | DTMS | ETS | CL | Total | % | - |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cairo | 1440 | 329 | 94 | 78 | 894 | 1 | 33 | 2824 | 19.43% | |
| Ain Shams | 40 | 83 | 14 | 18 | 85 | 1 | 2 | 243 | 1.67% | |
| Helwan | 40 | 68 | 39 | 15 | 794 | - | 2 | 958 | 6.59% | |
| South Valley, (Qena, Luxor, Hurghada]) | - | 2 | 109 | 10 | 3257 | 1 | 105 | 3484 | 23.97% | |
| Fayoum | - | - | 72 | 2 | 839 | - | 23 | 931 | 6.40% | |
| Minia | - | 3 | 51 | 3 | 1176 | 94 | 56 | 1383 | 9.51% | |
| Assiut | - | 3 | 84 | 3 | 1359 | 1 | 1 | 1450 | 9.97% | |
| Beni Suef] | - | - | 40 | 23 | 1408 | - | 45 | 1516 | 10.43% | |
| Sohag] | - | - | 35 | 8 | 963 | - | 8 | 1014 | 6.98% | |
| Benha] | - | - | 23 | 1 | 281 | - | 0 | 305 | 2.10% | |
| Other educational institutes | 80 | 82 | 31 | 23 | 203 | 3 | 7 | 429 | 2.95% | |
| Total | 1600 | 569 | 592 | 184 | 11209 | 101 | 282 | 14537 | 100% | |
| Percentage | 11.01% | 3.91% | 4.07% | 1.27% | 77.11% | 0.69% | 1.94% | 100% |
Also, the following graph shows the Development of Pathways graduates. ERS program was implemented for three years (2003–2005), and DTMS program was implemented only in each winter and summer since 2006 (winter is a short period of time, two weeks of mid-year holiday; summer vacation is almost 3 months).
Moreover, the project publications became 39 books used as educational training material. Several pilot attempts to introduce some of the skills-oriented training into the regular undergraduate programs in the participating universities were successfully implemented. The PHE steering committee including Presidents of the 10 participating universities out of the 18 public universities existing in Egypt, agreed to consider this issue a priority in their universities and to bring it to the attention of the Supreme Council of Universities (SCU), in line with the MOHE directives to reform higher education in Egypt.
The project established TOT programs to create a network of trainers, authors, monitors, evaluators, consultants, coordinators and administrative staff all over Egypt totaling 888 persons/experts. The project extended its activities to include 13 different governorates each of them has its own training facilities. Pathways websites help the underrepresented population in remote areas to access the training materials through the Internet. Free access of all Pathways training material, publications and reports are hosted in www.pathways.cu.edu.e.g. website in the training publications sub-menu. Another website was established as a central platform for trainees’ activities and communications (www.Pathways-news.com). Decentralized websites dedicated for PHE/EG were also established in each participating public university and linked in a network with the central website.
Strengthening capacity, core and democratic values between the trainees are among the by-products of the PHE training program. These values help trainees to develop their personalities, human rights capacities, increase their self-esteem, accept opinions of others, etc., through activities that encourage trainees to; elect a class coordinator through free election, evaluation of trainers, training venue, training facilities and PHE/EG management team, as well as self and peer assessment (the feedback is analyzed and continual development and amendment takes place). In addition, trainees are allowed to select the training approach that meets their needs (managerial, behavioral or knowledge), to suggest topics for the general lectures delivered during the training program (becomes part of a database for topics from which the general lectures are chosen), to organize some social activities together, and to plan and implement the final full-day ceremonial workshop that takes place at the end of each training program, with individual and/or group contributions of trainees to reflect critically on the outcome of their training.
The PHE/EG project is funded in three phases with an aggregate budget of 3.91 million US$. Phase-I was implemented in three years with a budget of 800,000 US$, followed by an intermediate phase implemented of one and half year in preparation for Phase-II with a budget of 410,000 US$. Phase-II of the PHE/EG implementation was prolonged to three and half years with a budget 1.2 million US$ from Ford Foundation because of the cost-sharing policy adopted by the PHE/EG Steering Committee to have universities share 50% of the direct training cost, reaching an aggregate of 1.5 million L.E., including contributions from project partners SFD and NCW, in a transition to have universities bear the total cost of training after the termination of project funds (a sustainability challenge). Phase-III is planned to be implemented over the coming two years with a total allocated budget of 1.5 million US$.
The Trainee can select one of the following approaches. Each approach is conducted over two weeks (75 training hrs).
Managerial Approach (MA)*
Behavioral Approach (BA)*
Knowledge Approach (KA)*
The Trainee can select one of the following programs. The first two programs are conducted over one week (35 training hrs). The rest of the programs have its own schedule/length.
Moreover, the project publications became 39 books used as educational training material. The project established a network for the trainers, authors, monitors, evaluators, consultants, coordinators and administrative staff all over Egypt with total volume of 880 experts. The project extended its activities to include 13 different governorates each of them has its own training facilities.
The Ford Foundation's Pathways to Higher Education initiative supports 91 higher education institutions located in 22 countries to transform policies, classroom practices, curricula, daily operations and institutional climate so that a greater number of students from marginalized groups enter and graduate with undergraduate degrees. These countries include:
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Egypt, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Mexico, Namibia, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Peru, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam.
The Pathways to Higher Education initiative takes a unique shape in each country because the cultural contexts of marginalized peoples, while linked by the common experiences of exclusion, are distinct. Therefore, the approaches vary in each country depending on its particular needs.[1]