The press
The Egyptian press is one of the most active in the Arab world. Its prestige and its spread go beyond the entire national framework. Titles are essentially daily newspapers. At the top of these comes the famous Al-Ahram, a political and information newspaper, written in Arabic. There are also more popular titles like Al-Akhbâr or Al-Gomhoin, also in Arabic. Some newspapers are written in French: Egyptian Progress and Journal of Egypt.
The influence of these dailies as well as a few weeklies corresponds quite exactly to that enjoyed by Egypt in the Arab intellectual world.
A national television channel managed by a National Office, Egyptian television has a channel broadcasting programs in color, which alternate national productions (varieties, surveys, social films, etc.) and products rented to companies of foreign productions, especially in the United States (soap operas).
Education
The governments of the 1952 revolution have all placed the fight against illiteracy among their priorities. For children aged six to twelve, education is now compulsory. There is no more discrimination between boys and girls, as it used to be in this Muslim country. On the contrary, the state is now encouraging an extension of primary schooling in a two-year preparatory cycle. Currently, more than 80% of school-age children attend school officially, compared with 80% of illiterate people in Egypt under Farouk.
The secondary cycle has followed an equivalent progression. The school attendance of girls has even increased considerably since 1952. Today, 2 million young Egyptians attend this cycle.
As far as higher education is concerned, contemporary Egypt has founded several universities since 1952, in Assiut in Middle Egypt, Mansourah in the eastern Delta and Tantah in the center of it. In total, the faculties provide quality education to more than 250,000 students.
Reserved for a minority, higher education is divided into eleven universities: the Islamic University of Al-Azhar, the secular university in Cairo, those of Aïn Chams to Heliopolis, Hé-louân in the the southern suburbs of Cairo, Tantah in the center of the Delta, Mansourah and Zagazig in the east thereof; Mounoufia, Alexandria, in the region of the canal, since 1971, Minîèh and Assiout, in Middle-Egypt, completing this network of universities.
