The Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) established a higher education reform strategy that has been translated into twenty five distinct projects addressing the diverse areas of reform (February 2000). Twelve of the twenty five projects have been bundled into six components, hereinafter called projects, and were given priority to be funded and implemented through a loan agreement between the Government of Egypt (GOE) and the World Bank (IBRD loan no. 4658EG, dated April 2002). The Quality Assurance and Accreditation Project (QAAP) is one of the six priority projects directed towards the improvement of quality, efficiency and relevance of higher education in Egypt. This project constitutes the cornerstone that is applied across the board to support every project within the higher education reform strategy, and will be the main focus of this operational manual.