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[Noor]

Make no little plans
July 16. 2009
The Nation

His fortnightly trips to the UAE are a symbol of his devotion to one of the most audacious, ambitious and strange projects in academia today, the creation of New York University, Abu Dhabi. With his Emirati counterparts, [NYU President John] Sexton is proposing to build an American-style research and liberal arts institution that will attract the world�s most elite students and scholars from day one. Just as grandly, Sexton envisions the Abu Dhabi campus as a kind of network hub that will operate in tandem with NYU in Manhattan to power a new �global university� comprising study sites on five continents. And as if all that were still too modest, Sexton believes these global moves will slingshot NYU into the ranks of the Ivy League. If the Abu Dhabi and New York campuses aren�t both ranked among the world�s top 10 universities in 20 years, he says, he�ll consider the whole undertaking a failure.

[snip]

First announced in October 2007, NYU Abu Dhabi has begun to take shape over the past year. Construction is nearly complete on the school�s interim downtown campus, where the first class of students will convene in the autumn of 2010. The master plan for the main campus, slated to sit downshore from the planned Guggenheim and Louvre museums on Saadiyat Island, is due for release soon, as are the first names on the faculty roster. Student recruitment is underway; the curriculum has been drawn up.

More here: http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090717/REVIEW/707169966/1008

[anaxiforminges]

I do wish NYUAD all the best. Hopefully they will avoid the fate of George Mason in RAK. It's always a risky enterprise to set up satellite campuses, but anything that enhances education in the Gulf is a welcome development.

[veiledsentiments]

The chances of success in something like this are pretty much slim and none IMHO... thus far there have been pretty much none looking at a model like this. If they want to make it, they need to follow the model that AUS has followed from the success of AUC and AUB. (although they are not really related except in name)

It will not attract enough people (if any...) from abroad and there are not enough "elite" students locally. Thus, it will limp along like the group currently in Qatar using this model... with their handful of students... mostly female.

And... Liberal Arts? Give me a break... talk about completely useless majors in whatever country you live. I think this fellow from NYU should share with us whatever it is he's smokin'

VS

[Sheikh N Bake]

Yes. What VS said.

Yale looked into Dubai and said No thanks. MIT participates in the creation of a new local university in Abu Dhabi, but behind the scenes only. They have stated quite frankly that they would not be able to duplicate anything remotely like an MIT experience in Abu Dhabi. I applaud their reasoning. Either it's Yale/MIT/whatever or it's not. If it's not, keep away from it. Come on, NYU, get real.

Furthermore, some administrators think they're going to attract students from all over the world to Abu Dhabi. Guess what--they'll attract some Indians and Pakistanis and Iranians and Arabs, but certainly not many from anywhere else. A lot of Chinese study in the US and UK. 99% of them would NEVER consider studying in the Middle East, no matter what college name is on the front gate. They would lose face, and they generally consider the ME a hellhole anyway.

[veiledsentiments]

If the Chinese (or Japanese or Korean... etc) go to the Middle East, it is to learn Arabic and they are sent by their government or company. They wouldn't choose the Gulf or NYU.

VS

[kiefer]

[anaxiforminges]

I'll still play the devil's advocate and say that the more big-name universities that come to the UAE the better. Darwinian (quasi)natural selection will weed out the unfit (e.g. George Mason, etc.) and leave out only the best. This is a great test tube for higher education in any case.

[Sheikh N Bake]

Well...I believe the highly prestigious universities in general have thoughtful administrators. George Mason is an average commuter (i.e., no traditional residential campus) state university that does not enjoy the status of the better-known D.C-area schools: George Washington U, American U, and of course Georgetown. GMU did not think it through and naively hired a bunch of local Indian bean counters to run a branch campus in Ras al Khaimah. They should have paid me a $100,000 consulting fee and I would have told them to either do it right or stay home. Essentially they merely sold their nameplate to a shoddy collection of hut-like buildings in the scraggly dustbowl side of town.

But the notion that the more big-name schools in the UAE the better is null and void, and we've discussed the reasons in this thread and others.