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[globalnomad2]

Check out the item this week (as of June 20, 2006) in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

I would certainly dispute the claim by Provost Peter Stearns that we will be getting our checks "very, very soon" and that this snag is due merely to a "routine audit by local authorities."

For one thing, I am already in the United States, having received a flight ticket from GMU (but not the accrued pay). The local sponsors will not mail the checks anywhere; instead they are being held for pickup at the UAE campus. That means I will not receive my check until I return from summer vacation in early August.

I also have doubts about claims of internal or external audits being the cause of our salary delay. It is a common tactic among many local employers to simply withhold paychecks to ensure employees' return from vacation. While such a practice may cause enough resentment for some instructors to pick up their checks and walk out the door for good, in the long run the sponsors believe they will come out ahead by treating faculty in this manner.

Indeed, our benefits and our treatment at GMU-RAK are well below par compared to other universities in the UAE. I know this because I worked for the Higher Colleges of Technology (Dubai Women's College) for five years (1997-2002) and the Petroleum Institute for two years after that.

Here is a brief point-by-point comparison between faculty benefits at GMU-RAK and all other universities that I know of in the UAE:

1. At the Higher Colleges, when I arrived in 1997, the housing allowance was about $17,000 per annum and the one-time furniture allowance was $8000. This is true for all their campuses including the two in Ras al Khaimah. Allowances are the same or better at all other universities I am aware of. But the housing allowance at GMU is $5500 and the furniture allowance is $2700. I am thus forced to live in a shoebox one-bedroom apartment with a shabby kitchen and third-world bathroom. As for the furniture allowance, I needed to spend an additional $1300 from my own pocket to furnish this very tiny apartment. These conditions are simply not customary for employment at universities in the UAE.

2. We are forced to sign in every day and are harrassed about the hours we keep if we leave before 3 pm. Again: not customary in the UAE, just as it is not in the U.S. Thus, I informed them I will no longer do any academic work on my own time.

3. All universities I know of in the UAE have a semester break in January during which faculty receive two weeks of holidays over and above their annual leave. The students get the break, but faculty do not.

4. The students get a Spring Break, but faculty do not.

5. Summer vacation is 6 weeks compared to 7 or 8 weeks at other universities in the UAE. And then, of course, they withhold our vacation pay to ensure our return on Aug. 1st.

6. The sponsors employ various tricks to attempt to weasel out of some of the ticket money. Those faculty who requested cash in lieu of a ticket needed to submit the flight ticket prices for flights after June 17, the day our vacation began. But the sponsors attempted to calculate the ticket money based on prices prior to June 15, when it was still the cheaper low season.

7. It is customary in the UAE for faculty to receive vacation pay for all of their annual leave. GMU, however, pays only the actual accrued leave (36 days for me), forcing us to borrow the additional nine days as unpaid leave, then apply separately for the difference once we've earned it at the end of the academic year. I imagine they will not make it easy, either.

8. Any pending pay is permanently withheld when an employee gives the proper resignation notice. At least, that is what happened to an admissions officer: once she gave notice, all pending pay was withheld. These sponsors can do whatever they want.

Perhaps a central reason for these problems is that GMU never provided any leadership until about two weeks ago, when they finally appointed a very high-ranking Vice President to manage our campus. Before then, the highest-ranking GMU official in the UAE was an English-language teacher-trainer who runs the Intensive English program, supervising three instructors, myself included. She holds a master's degree.

GMU should have provided better leadership during the past academic year, and I do not feel sorry for them. I have worked for SUNY-Buffalo when they started up their branch campus in Kuala Lumpur in 1986, and I was with Southern Illinois U at Carbondale when they established their Japan campus in 1988. Those two at least provided the proper leadership at the beginning, when it was most needed, rather than a year later, as GMU has done, as if it were an afterthought.

[veiledsentiments]

I wondered about GM's expertise in the setting up of international branches and their knowledge of the Middle East, and they have proven to be clueless it seems. Whyever did they make the decision to have such a third world style organization and benefit package. Did no one have the ability to do any research on the standards of the country? Quite embarrasing for them I should hope.

Could you post the link for the article that you mentioned? Anyone considering a job with them should be able to get to it easily.

VS

[Saphiya]

Thanks for your informative post.



Good luck on getting the pay owed to you.

Why not come back to HCT?

[globalnomad2]

Here is the link for that article in the Chroncile of Highere Education: http://chronicle.com/daily/2006/06/2006062003n.htm

[veiledsentiments]

Thanks Global... I hate papers that make you subscribe to read them...

VS

[globalnomad2]

Here is the text--somewhat belatedly--from the Chronicle of Higher Education, June 20, 2006. The new sponsor is so far no better, and they have stolen 1/4 of a recent paycheck of mine as punishment for having taken the full summer vacation instead of just the days I had actually earned on the books. (Silly me, assuming a university lecturer can take his/her summer vacation in its entirety--details on the HCT interviews thread...meanwhile, enjoy this article): (NOTE: we have 50+ students now, not 200 as Mason had rosily predicted)

GEORGE MASON U. CAMPUS IN PERSIAN GULF NATION FACES A SALARY GLITCH

By Burton Bollag (June 20, 2006)

George Mason University's first overseas campus, in Ras al Khaimah, part of the United Arab Emirates, hit a snag last week, when its academic and support staff members did not receive their end-of-year pay. As of Monday, they were still waiting for their June salaries, accrued vacation days, and money for airline tickets home.

George Mason's provost, Peter N. Stearns, who was traveling in Russia on Monday, said through a spokesman that the payments had been delayed by a "routine" audit that was being carried out by local authorities, in the Emirates. Mr. Stearns said employees would be getting their checks "very, very soon."

This past academic year, the campus had only about 30 students, all in an Englihs-language program. Although the staff pay was overdue by only a few days, Edward Meyricke, an Australian and one of only three faculty members, said several people had had to postpone travel plans. Moreover, the staff had received no notice or explanation from George Mason.

Under a joint venture with a local partner, George Mason is responsible for the campus's academic side and its overall management, but infrastructure, salaries and operating costs are mostly borne by ... [the local sponsors].

The campus's problem illustrates the difficulties of running overseas academic joint ventures. Several institutions in the United States have already opened branches in the oil-rich Arab states of the Persian Gulf, and others are considering such moves. Yet several American educators have complained that it is sometimes hard to ascertain the trustworthiness of businesses and other entities in the region that propose partnerships.

George Mason says the branch's first full year of academic programs will begin on schedule in September with about 200 students. Initital programs will be at an undergraduate level in nursing and health science, information technology and engineering, and management.

[Harriet]

In fairness to George Mason RAK, I think you should revisit this post, globalnomad2.

Since your original post, GM has either dumped or declawed much of the Kerala Mafia that was running the joint and hired a very savvy woman with several years' experience in the UAE who is currently running the campus (though I think it may be just temporary until she goes on to the job she was originally hired for). By all reports the place is turning around.

I believe one of the problems they faced last year was that they were absentees -- they left the running of the place to unqualified people who had never been affliliated with the US campus, and didn't know what the students really wanted ( for example, there was a large number of non-native English-speaking teachers in the start up-- not what was expected from an "American" university). Start up years are bad at best, and I think the lack of direct supervision by Mason was a real problem. They seem to be rectifying it.

Did they do right byyou financially in the end?