I used to go and see graduation projects of engineering colleges all over Egypt , Every year they are all gathered in Cairo , After the third year of doing this I found that there is no new , every year is a mirror to the previous year , it only shows lake of support in the college , most of graduation projects are self funded , this puts limits on quality and materials used .
An other thing that makes me wonder is that till now there is no plans to make more than department join the same project , I don’t see a meaning of making a project by one department , When I see a robot made by electronic engineer I say wow good control , but poor mechanical design , and the same for the mechanical machine made by mechanical engineer , I say if only the control system was automatic !!
We have the qualifications and the potential to do such a thing , the Egyptian product that is full designed by US , but this will not be done by dreaming .
I was watching job market for three years now , I saw three generations get graduated of this college ,I have seen what they did , and I found one interesting thing which is the market doesn’t support the engineer who wants to design some thing , all the market opens his arms to the plug and play engineer , the engineer who doesn’t know any thing about the device in front of him , and when it is damaged his duty is to call the company that made it to come and replace it !!
It is easy to be creative , but it is easier to break a creative mind , no wonder we find most of our GOOD engineers sell them selves to the international market ,why because the government and the system is doing what it can to break them , I remember in my first year my impression when I saw graduation project , at that time I was taking some summer courses in advanced control techniques , at that time when I visited Cairo I looked at most of the projects asking my self is this a graduation project ? because I was able to do this , I was able to make what they did as a graduation project alone !!! not every thing there but I can say that 40% of the projects there was doable by me using my growing knowledge , why is that ? it was because there is no new ideas , in India they use colleges to solve manufacturing problems , and at the end of the year they get new solution , saving thousands of dollars ,why ? because the student work for free , after graduation his price rises rapidly so it is more economical to use him while he is for free , and for him it is a good opportunity to have a real time project .
In Egypt they started doing this but as usual they didn’t enter the stage of making more than one department in one project , and give them suitable fund .
We really have great minds ,I can touch them every where , but we don’t have any programs to develop those minds and make them some thing great , the proof for this is that non of the Egyptian scientist that make discoveries or get Nobel prizes can do this in Egypt , because in Egypt we have a hostile environment against research , here we are now programmed on buying new tech , not trying to get the KNOW HOW technology and try to apply it here , what I see now is the counter ,we are encouraging disabling this fresh minds and force them to be slaves to foreign technologies .
I wish that I find some day a real program that enables us to make our own car ,our own ship , our own food , and have some self dependence .
