30/05/2026
UMANY urges the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) to immediately clarify why students who pursued pharmacy degrees at Egypt‘s renowned Alexandria University, with offer letter from MOHE, are now being denied government recognition upon returning home to sit for their professional licensing examinations.
Today, it was exposed that at least four Malaysian students pursued pharmacy programs at Alexandria University, with some even studying abroad after receiving official offer letters from our own MOHE. However, when they returned to Malaysia to obtain their professional licenses, they were barred by the Pharmacy Board of Malaysia (LFM). The justification given was that under the Registration of Pharmacists Act 1951, only the specific universities and degrees explicitly listed in the First Schedule of the Act can be recognized, and the Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D - Clinical Pharmacy) degree obtained by these four students is conspicuously absent from the list.
Within the Schedule, the entry for Alexandria University only recognizes the ”Bachelor of Pharmacy“ nomenclature, with no mention of ”Pharm.D“. Yet, as early as 2019, the Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education had already changed its national curriculum to align with international standards, reforming all tertiary pharmacy programs from a ”Bachelor of Pharmacy“ to a ”Pharm.D“. According to revelations by one of the students’ mothers, Nurul Izzah Afifah Mustapha only traveled to Egypt after receiving her official MOHE offer letter in 2021. Another student, Mariatul Karimah Ishak, stated that while the specialization offered via MOHE‘s official letter was indeed ”Pharmacy,“ the underlying syllabus had already been changed back in 2019.
This is a glaring case of gross negligence on the part of MOHE. When issuing the offer letters in 2021, the ministry completely failed to conduct due diligence, entirely overlooking the fact that the Egyptian educational authorities and universities had changed and upgraded the course two years prior. Now, due to MOHE’s administrative oversight, the careers of at least four top students have been severely jeopardized…..