Civil engineering education and water related challenges in Egypt

Traditionally, undergraduate civil engineering education in Egypt, in the water area, emphasised the design and construction aspects of the hydraulic works needed for water resources development, either to use water beneficially or to provide the needed protection against damage. The development of computers as a powerful tool, economics as a science and the environment as a major concern, are still badly incorporated into the undergraduate civil engineering programs in most Egyptian universities. This work assesses the adequacy of the material given in a representative undergraduate civil engineering program in an Egyptian university, in providing the required awareness of environmental issues and methods of pollution control. It promotes a new value system, one which considers not only the needs of the people living now, but also those of future generations, by identifying the overall educational needs; soliciting the opinion of the students through a questionnaire distributed on a sample of students in Cairo University; and through the comparison of the undergraduate civil engineering curriculum at Cairo University with two representative curricula, one from a Gulf University and the other from a university in the USA. Recommendations to strengthen the civil engineering program in the water area to respond to water related environmental challenges in Egypt are outlined.