My memory has been refreshed. I now recall every day I spent at university feeling the insignificance of this so called degree. Recounting all the days I walked into that place feeling depressed and alone and pressured and more importantly, angry. Angry at a majority of professors who refuse to adapt to diversity, treating all students like they’re all identical. Little products of their bestowed education on us, only there to take notes, meet deadlines and hand in papers.

Angry with an administration that still treats us like school children, refusing to give us our basic college rights, like a student union or a student body of any sort! Using things like our attendance against us to squeeze more bloody money from our families’ veins and force us to attend the lectures we learn nothing from, which wastes our money, aggravates us, and overwhelms us with stupidity!

Angry with the security men standing at every corner monitoring my every movement and asking me to stand further away from my male colleague, because god forbid, we might be engaging in some sort of sexual conduct!

Or maybe I’m angry with the Cafeteria that costs insane money and sells horrible products to a group of people who actually pay big money for their college education, drive a minimum of 40Kilos a day to get there, and spend even more money on crappy food!

Lets do the math, the average student pays about 25,000 EGP (I will not transfer that into dollars, because well, that’s an entirely different purchasing power equation, so I’ll stick with telling you that a Big Mac meal in Egypt costs about 25 EGP ) a semester. Then pays about 20 EGP every couple of days for gas, or alternatively, 2500 a year for the bus provided by the university. Then think of a minimum of 10 pounds spent in that Caf...not very economical!

Fine, let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that I am the one who asked for a private education, and that I shouldn’t complain. Let’s also remember that this so called private education is supposed to actually be of a much higher quality right? I’m supposed to be paying for the luxurious campus, the well equipped facilities, the prestigious professors, the excellent education, and oh, of course, the name of the university on my degree. Misr International f*****g University!

Now lets see, amidst the different professors I’ve had across the 4 years I spent in that dump, I can count maybe 3 or 4 at the most, who actually had a PhD. I have been taught by T.A’s who graduated with a lower GPA than mine, professors who don’t actually know what the articles they teach really say, and an admission that messes up all of our attendance so that we can get dropped in a course, pay it again, drop it again, pay it again...etc!

Now Misr International University (MIU), is one of the oldest private universities in Egypt, and supposedly, among educators and academics, has one of the better reputations amidst other private, and more recent universities. Among students however, it’s a shithole. Why? Well other than all the reasons I stated above, they screw us!

They spend a minimum of four years trying to cheat us. Take more money than they’re worth, rip us of any sense of creativity, independence, intelligence and progress. They mouth feed us poor education, and they are masters at teaching the same thing in different ways over a span of 42 subjects..

I graduated almost two years ago, and have discovered that this place taught me zilch! Taught me how to deal with bureaucratic bullshit, how to dumb down all my conversations, how to pick the most mundane topics to write papers on and how to prepare the most boring presentations in the world, and after all that, how to stand there, with my graduation project, the one thing I did with true conviction, and be told that it’s garbage, and then be advised to reconsider my major, by people who didn’t take the time of day to listen or even look at it.

Last night, my friend had her graduation project proposal, and was met by 4 professors who refused to listen, and sat there arrogantly coming up with their own ideas and assuming what she meant and deciding for her, what HER graduation project shall be about, instead of giving her a platform to express herself, and present her topic the way she sees it.

So much for private education in Egypt, so much for MIU, and so much for a freaking degree! Kiss it!