In 2022, TMU welcomed 39 students to a state-of-the-art satellite campus in Egypt. Less than a year later, they shut it all down—what went wrong?

By Sarah Grishpul, Jasmine Makar and Edward Lander

In 2017, Egypt had a problem. Top scholars were beginning to trickle out of the country to study at universities in the West. And worse, those leaving weren’t coming back. While the country’s population had more than doubled to 100 million between 1994 and 2014, economic growth was being bottlenecked by a volatile political climate and high inflation—which had ballooned to 30 per cent for most of the year, according to Universities UK International.

But the government had a solution to the ‘brain drain’: bring the Western schools to the East.

This wasn’t the first time Egypt had tried this. In 1919, the American University in Cairo opened as a new Western-style education institution in the country. In the early 2000s it ramped up even more. The French University in Egypt opened in 2002, followed by a German one in 2003 and a British university in 2005.

So when the brain drain came back, the Egyptian parliament pushed it even further by passing Law No. 162 in 2018, which for the first time, permitted accredited foreign universities to open branch campuses in the country.

At the same time, the Egyptian government was busy with another venture—since 2015, they had been constructing the New Administrative Capital (NAC), a massive planned city 45 kilometres east of Cairo. It would serve as a new seat for the government, far from the congestion and aging infrastructure of the old capital, according to the Egyptian government.

As a blank slate in the desert, it was yet another opportunity for investment from foreign education institutions. Canadian schools took notice. That year, the Universities of Canada in Egypt (UCE) opened inside the NAC—an organization which was set up as a hub for future Canadian branches. The University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) got on board and opened a branch within the year.

Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) has been making attempts to go global for years now. Since 2019, the university has had a lofty goal of landing itself in the top 200 of internationally-ranked universities. They currently sit between 600 and 800 according to Times Higher Education. To meet their goal, they’d need to prove they’re among the best schools to teach and study at on a world stage. This is part of what’s behind TMU’s International Strategy, which focuses on boosting the school’s global brand and creating partnerships with institutions outside of Canada. When the strategy was launched in 2019, a big part of the venture was setting up some form of transnational education—which are programs where students study in their home country but earn a degree from a foreign university.

In a January 2022 senate meeting, TMU’s—then Ryerson University—administration explained the type of transnational education they sought was dependent on a partner who could deal with the financial and administrative hurdles, letting TMU focus on academics.

In UCE, they found this partner. TMU was aware of the organization’s sterling record with UPEI, which had enrolment numbers jump to 1,000 by its second year. And because of Law No. 162, they could set up shop in Egypt without worrying about funding, facilities, recruitment, marketing or any kind of student services. All that fell on TMU was the curriculum.

In a report to the senate in October 2020, TMU’s Academic Standards Committee stated that the university’s presence at UCE would “immediately demonstrate Ryerson’s Global Leadership and the goal of expanded Internationalization.”

On Feb. 19, 2021 the university publicly announced it’d be joining UCE and opening a branch in Egypt. TMU would offer a handful of programs spanning two faculties—The Creative School and the Faculty of Engineering and Architectural Science.

To Hamada* it all sounded exciting. He was born in Cairo and was interested in pursuing something in media but programs in the specific niche he wanted to pursue hardly existed in Egypt, he says. But from how TMU-Cairo was marketed, he thought he’d be able to get his foot in the door through its programs.

He was aware of other foreign branch campuses which had opened in the city after Law No. 162 came into effect—like Coventry University and Hertfordshire University both hosted by The British University in Egypt. However, Hamada felt TMU was a step above the rest.

The campus would be housed in a gray and blue six-storey building directly across from UPEI’s. According to a TMU promotional video, it would house “industry-level” facilities including an “innovation studio,” a fashion sewing lab, a radio institute and a handful of Mac computer labs.

After a visit to UCE in November 2022, TMU president Mohamed Lachemi called the campus “state of the art” on his LinkedIn and said it was clear a “bright future” was in store.

The campus was expected to open in 2021 but was delayed a year due to COVID-19 restrictions and incomplete facilities, according to the university. Hamada applied for the Fall 2022 semester and got in. The semester began on Sept. 27, 2022. Hamada and the other students arrived on the campus alongside UPEI’s new cohort for UCE’s Stranger Things themed orientation.

Each day of classes, a bus chartered by UCE would collect him and other students from across Cairo, driving him 40 minutes to campus, not far from the capital’s new presidential palace which was under construction at the time.

Although classes were small, he was doing the kind of work he wanted to do.

That October, then-Creative School dean Charles Falzon hosted a virtual meeting for the faculty’s students with famed Egyptian footballer Ahmed “Mido” Hossam. Hamada says this solidified his hopes for the opportunities the school could bring.

“It looked like they had connections and whatnot—it looked exciting,” he says.

The rest of the year was incredibly gratifying, Hamada says. He got close with the other students—which wasn’t difficult since there were only 39 across both faculties. He also became friends with professors and academic assistants (AA) as well—they were essentially on a first-name basis. “It genuinely felt like a second family,” he says.

On the morning of Aug. 10, 2023—a few months after his first year ended—Hamada wakes up to a call from another student. He tells Hamada to look in a group chat they’re part of with other Cairo students and AAs. Someone has said that the campus is closing—that TMU is putting a hold on admissions to Cairo and the status of current students hangs in the balance. Later, the university confirms it.

Hamada calls his parents, who are in shock. “It took us a couple days to process that,” he says.

The program Hamada was so eager to continue in—the one only being offered at TMU—seemed like it would be disappearing.

…

If you ask TMU, the closure was the fault of a rocky economy in Egypt. At least that’s what Lachemi told the senate in October 2023—a year after the campus opened.

There’s truth to this—inflation hit 41 per cent that summer, according to the Central Bank of Egypt. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, it caused significant disruptions to North Africa’s supply chain, causing a sharp increase in food and fuel prices. According to the United Nations, prior to the war, Egypt imported around 75 per cent of its grain from Russia or Ukraine.

These issues quickly found their way between the university and UCE. Lachemi told the senate that given the state of the economy in the country, UCE “experienced a lot of difficulties to provide us with the necessary support and the necessary infrastructure to run our programs.”

More recently, the university said in an emailed statement to The Eyeopener that the closure largely boiled down to the incompleteness of these facilities. In a phone call with The Eye, Lachemi corroborated this.

“Learning conditions like labs and studio spaces that were required to deliver our programs were not complete,” he said. Lachemi added that only courses which did not require these facilities and equipment were able to be held. “Because of this deficiency, we decided not to continue operations.”

Students had taken notice of this. Hamada says the top floors of the building were never completed and studios for Creative School students in the basement never came to fruition. He says when they were unable to use these studios, TMU brought them to the Egypt Media Production City, a massive professional movie-making campus in 6th of October City, 65km west of Cairo.

As per Law No. 162, the completion of these facilities was the responsibility of the host organization—UCE. In an emailed statement to The Eye, UCE declined to comment on the state of the facilities at the time of the closure.

Following a public announcement on Aug. 18, both TMU and UCE met with students and parents to try and find a way to move forward. Members of TMU’s administration held a virtual meeting where attendees aired grievances and discussed what kind of restitution might be given to the displaced students.

Hamada says the meeting held by UCE, however got heated. Some parents had allegedly reached out to officials from the Egyptian Ministry of Education—others fought with members with UCE leadership for what they believed would be better accommodation.

After the consultation, each student was presented with two options. They could remain in Egypt and attend another institution—with a full scholarship provided by TMU—but they couldn’t transfer their credits and would have to redo their first year. Alternatively, they could pack their bags and move 9,000 kilometres to Toronto and complete their degrees on TMU’s home campus. Tuition would be waived, they’d receive a free residence space until they graduate and a one-time $10,000 stipend to cover any additional costs. But this also meant uprooting their lives in Egypt, leaving families behind and moving to a country many had never even visited.

For Hamada, making this decision came down to finances. He and his parents calculated the costs of both options and found they were essentially identical. But if he came to Canada he wouldn’t have to start all over again—so he decided to stay at TMU.

Youssef*, an engineering student at TMU-Cairo, had already spent time away from his family in his youth at school. He felt going away to Canada wouldn’t be much different. He ended up choosing to come to Toronto as well—and his parents were glad he was getting the opportunity.

Each student signed a written document declaring their acceptance of the terms. That agreement went both ways. While the students would receive a full ride, they agreed to never make another demand to TMU or UCE. “You hereby agree to release and forever discharge the University of and from any and all past, present or future claims…,” reads one of the documents obtained by The Eye.

Either way, it didn’t matter much—Hamada and Youssef were more than satisfied. “If they did leave us and close and just ignore us…they could do it, but they didn’t do it,” says Youssef. “They did their best to find a solution for the situation.”

In total, 29 students elected to come study in Toronto. However, of those 29 only four were Canadian citizens and able to immediately move to the country. The remaining 25 spent their next two semesters learning virtually from Egypt while waiting for their study visas to be approved.

Some of these classes were synchronous with those taught in Toronto—straddling a seven-hour time difference. Hamada says one class took place between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. When their visas were approved, the full cohort of students travelled on one EgyptAir flight to Pearson Airport, alongside faculty members.

Many of these students currently live in rooms throughout Pitman Hall and are approaching graduation this spring. Those in engineering, however, will remain here another year until their five-year program is complete in 2027.

Youssef has become well-adjusted to the change. “We have a good community. When we came to TMU we met a lot of students who are Arab. It’s like we’re at home,” he says. Hamada still lives with two others from the Cairo cohort in Pitman Hall.

Although many of the students were happy with the outcome, it came at a high price for the university. A conservative estimate of just the tuition costs covered by TMU for the remainder of their degrees (if paid at the same rate as in Cairo—$17,000 per year) sits around $1.5 million. And that’s excluding the 10 students who remained in Egypt, whose tuition to other universities was also paid by TMU, or the several years of residence fees waived for those who came to Canada—which would have been several-hundred thousand dollars alone. Considering all this—plus the $10,000 stipend—the university could very well be spending upward of three million dollars.

Before it became clear the campus couldn’t remain open, UCE was seemingly hoping to expanding it. According to their website in 2022, UCE claimed in the “near future Business and Arts will be available at Ryerson Cairo Campus as well as Graphic Communications Management and Interior Design.”

Youssef says he saw a noticeable difference in the quality of facilities when he came to Toronto. The contrast between the labs he studied in on the Cairo campus and those in the George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre was night and day. He says he didn’t know what kinds of facilities he was supposed to have, and it was only when he arrived in Toronto that he realized what he was missing.

“We didn’t have any of this in Egypt,” he says.

Hamada is unsure whether he’ll stay in Canada after graduating—which he’s set to do this spring. The degree he’s nearly earned in Toronto is useful but in Egypt, he says, it won’t take him as far.

Looking back, Hamada isn’t so sure the venture was all it was cracked up to be from the beginning. While the programs at TMU-Cairo appeared prestigious and well-connected, Hamada believes many were less competitive or applicable in the actual Egyptian market. Compared to UPEI, which offered bachelor’s degrees in STEM programs and a Masters in Business Administration, TMU’s niche selection of programs seemingly only appealed to a small group of students, he says.

The circumstances which brought Hamada and his peers to Canada were extraordinary but to many of them it’s now a second home. Hamada has friends here, and the roots of a career. Even with the closure two years behind them, he and many of the other students remain in a kind of limbo, caught between two places.

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The University of Prince Edward Island has remained the sole partner of UCE since TMU pulled out. While members of McMaster University’s administration met with UCE’s leadership in March 2024, seemingly nothing has come of it.

In an emailed statement to The Eye, UCE confirmed that the partnership between TMU and UCE concluded in 2023 and the matter between the institutions has “since been resolved through a mutually agreed settlement,” the statement read. “In accordance with the terms of that agreement, we cannot comment on the details of the circumstances surrounding the conclusion of the partnership.”

When Mark Carney took office last year, he brought a swift end to Trudeau-era immigration policies, cutting in half the amount of international student permits being granted. This put an end to many of the opportunities international students had to come study at universities like TMU.

Combined with the closure of TMU-Cairo, the cap seems as though it’d be a significant blow to the International Strategy the university embarked on in 2019. If less international students are studying here and its presence in other countries is diminished, what hope does TMU have for stepping out onto a world stage? And in the end, one has to ask the question—was the closure of the campus more of a hinderance than a help to these global goals

*These sources are remaining anonymous for privacy reasons. The Eye has verified these sources.