email to the german affiliates of the guc, plus all staff members ..

To/ 

Prof. Dr. Peter Frankenberg, Prof. Dr. Hans Wolff, H. E. Brend Erbel, Prof. Dr. Wolfram Ressel, Prof. Dr. Karl Joachim Ebeling, Prof. Dr. Dieter Fritsch, Dr. Arend Oetker .. German Members of the Board of Trustees 

Professor Paul Kühn, Professor Hans Peter Großmann, Professor Stefan Laufer, Professor Hartmut Seliger, Professor Hans-Dieter Görtz, Professor Erich Zahn, Professor Dieter Beschorner, Professor Eberhard Roos, Professor Paul Ziemann, Professor Rayan Abdullah .. Founding Deans of Faculties 

I'm a member of the German university in Cairo's Alumni, a Masters graduate with High Honours from the Media Engineering and Technology Faculty .. I'm speaking of behalf of myself and some former and current students and faculty .. 

During the past couple of weeks, there has been severe escalation at the Guc, following a number of student protests and staff/management negotiations, at the center of this standoff is the declining Guc's educational experiance quality, and the values that the Guc Management lacks in its treatment of its students. 

For the past 8 years since its initiation, the Guc has not given us what we were promised - a German System of Education. The Guc Chairman and Founder, Prof. Ashraf Mansour, has been interfering in in every little aspect of its running, undermining the Authority of its Deans and Academic faculty, and the credibility of its Education. 

This has been witnessed and told to us by many different current and past academics, interference includes passing students whose professors deemed must fail, and failing/dropping courses for students the professors might've wanted to give a chance .. 

The chairman of the board of trustees has marginalized the university's President, who's president by name only. Has installed policies which are humiliating to both students and academics, He also stripped the Institution of many fundamental German and Universal Educational values (or it happened under his leadership anyways): like students right to have a union, complain without being harassed and threatened with expulsion, or object to unfair treatment; cases like being in dropped in courses the students did attend, not accepting medical excuses which should be accepted, not allowing them to do their bachelor projects during the summer, imposing semester fees on students who do their thesis abroad in German institutions even though they do not attend at the Guc during that period, refusing to award engineering international certificates on the fourth year as they were promised thus forcing the students to continue and pay for the fifth year against their will, hiding final exam grades and imposing a fee on the students should they wish to view it! The list goes on and on .. 

Those things and many others constitute a breach of faith on our contract with the Guc on the basis of which we entered, we were promised small class sizes then ended up with lecture halls of up to 250 students, we were promised 50% German academics staff yet even the German language center is mostly based on non-native speakers, after four courses of german, most students pass yet they don't even speak the language at a very basic level .. 

Worse is Mr. Mansour's total disregard to the demands of students and staff, their dignity and the respect of the Educational Institute. Research is almost dead in the Guc, and each year, protest resignations are by the handful.  

From what I understand the Guc was supported by funds German government agencies, that large sums of money were spent to support it. Some sources speculate that the Guc spends only less than 15-20% of education, those were not just rumors, they were practical observations, drawn from the fact that the Guc has 7000 students this year, around 500 on scholerships according to them, and inferring from their fee structure: more then 280-300 million egyptian pounds a year enter the German university in Cairo.

Yet with the low salaries they pay and the severe understaffing of departments, estimates on total academic salaries hover between 25-70 million egyptian pounds a year, . This is too low to a percentage of the university's revenue to be spent on academics.  

If those estimates are indeed, true, which most past and present members of Guc faculty we talked to seemed to agree to, where does the rest of the money go? They all agree that the Guc spends very little on research as well, that its difficult to obtain that least amount of funding (Students and Staff paid from their pocket for many things on the Robocup competition last year) .. And why does Germany not pressure Mr. Mansour, since they've provided so many funds for him, to divert the funds into Academics and Education?  

Of course, Prof. Mansour is free to provide transparency and if indeed there's no financial mismanagement he has no reason to hold back from releasing any financial records, those should include donations, taxes and distinguish between the university's total expenditure on salaries between the academic and the managerial ones (for the obvious reasons). 

We love our University, we love our Academics and Deans who've worked so hard to teach us and we're grateful for them, they suffer with us as well, and we can't really learn if they don't get better working conditions - less hours, more respect (the Guc logs every professors entrance and exit hour, they subtract from their salary sometimes if they miss a day, tell me, am I wrong or is this disrespectful and, never the thing that'd happen in Germany? Most doctors I've talked to said they left because of lack of respect, from Mr. Mansour personally) and academic independence, more freedom to do what they want with teaching and research without interference or tiresome and time-wasting centralized bureaucracy.   

And we do not want the cooperation with Germany to end, on the contrary, we want it to strengthen, this is one of the first German International Universities in the world and it is sad that it does not really represent the quality or the values of Germany, in Germany, students don't get threatened with expulsion if they say their minds, in Germany, if a students alleges to be physically assaulted by a staff member, and many students stand up for her, they don't all get suspended while the staff member does nothing - of course, I say alleged because I don't know the exact correctness of the event, and I would never want be an unfair to a staff member in case they've been wrongfully accused, but in Germany, at least the University would issue a statement regarding the case, explaining its decision on the event, that way the staff member would be defended and have his name cleared as well. In Mr. Mansour's university, the students could protest angrily outside his office for hours, and he'd not even respond.

We want to know, respectable board members, why does this continue? What is the exact arrangement between yourselves and the Guc? Does the German side own shares in the University, does it have a voting power to change the President and the Chairman, or does it even have partial voting powers, and if so by how much? 

And if the German side does not indeed have any leverage over Mr. Mansour, if he completely owns the University and is legally allowed to make as much profit as he wants from it, what is the German side's take on this situation? If the students and the staff press for a change of management, complain to the Egyptian Authorities, will they support us? Remember, we've entered this university based on your credibility, the credibility of the people representing German Education and the Universities of Ulm, Tuebingen and Stuttgart, to 'assure the excellence of education and quality', we ask your help in assuring that excellence now. The Guc aggressively used that credibility in its marketing.

The Guc can be a Leading class Institute representing German Education all over the world, it should not, after all the hard work and effort poured into it, be undone by one man's mismanagment. The University is an Institute by itself, belonging to its Community and its Researchers and Students. All our complaints are legitimate and should an investigation be opened in the matter and faculty and students contacted, they'd be verified and more would surface, we want an end to Prof. Mansour's Management, installing a new, credible and independent president, and introduce new rules regarding Guc's Transparency and a Profit limit of 10-15% since by Egyptian law the primary purpose of a private university SHOULD NOT be to make profit, and electing a chairman the Students and Faculty would accept and trust. I ask that the Esteemed Board Members and Founders look at our case, not abandon this Institute, support us in our demands and answer our questions regarding their leverage and involvement. There were rumors circulating that the Universities of Ulm and Stuttgart would withdraw their Support, it'd be a tragedy if that happens, Again, we want more cooperation with Germany to give this Institution and its members the esteem they deserve and rise up with it to its full potential .. 

I know that there's a Board of Trustees meeting this Saturday, I ask that you meet the representatives of the Students and Staff, without the presence of any of the Guc's Upper Management. Its not that we're not going to do this ourselves; the Guc Community should and will affect its own change by itself for the betterment of our University, its just that we feel mislead when it comes to our dealing with the Management and your input would help us be clear on things.    

We're waiting for an answer from you .. 

Thank you, 

Mohammed Al-Mehdar

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P.s. we've more facts and they're being published now, you can keep updated here: gucian-voice.blogspot.com ..