Cairo

Education

Primary education is free and compulsory in Cairo, as elsewhere in Egypt, and university tuition has been free since 1962. In the 1990s, Egypt's first lady, Suzanne Mubarak, spearheaded a program to improve literacy that included the creation of new public libraries; the "Reading for All" program to make inexpensive juvenile books available to children throughout the country; and a series of international book fairs. The Children's Cultural Center was officially opened by Mrs. Mubarak in Heliopolis in 1997.

Founded in the tenth century, Al-Azhar University, the premier center of religious instruction in the Islamic world, is said to be the oldest continuously operating university in the world.

Cairo University, founded in 1908, produces the country's largest number of college graduates and college-educated professionals. It has about 155,000 students and 3,158 faculty members, operates some 100 research institutes and offers programs in agriculture, medicine, nursing, economics, political science, the arts, and other fields. Most facilities of the university's main campus are located to the southeast of downtown Cairo, and it operates branches in Al Fayyum and Bani Suwayf, as well as Khartoum (Sudan).

Cairo's third major institution of higher learning is Ain Shams University. Located in the heart of the city, it enrolls approximately 100,000 undergraduates and 30,000 graduate students and has a faculty of 3,700.