Job Discussion Forums

[globalnomad2]

Here's the link, from the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/nyregion/31nyu.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

And here's an excerpt:
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The professor familiar with the plans admitted that there were risks involved in the project. �The two issues for which there are not clear and easy answers are whether we can get faculty comparable to the quality of N.Y.U. faculty, and whether we can get students comparable to N.Y.U. undergraduates,� he said.

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I can tell you one thing--George Mason U. has failed miserably in this regard. They can't pay the salaries of top-notch American faculty, and their strategy has been to ignore the qualified American PhDs who do apply, and hire Indians and Arabs with local degrees or distance degrees from Liverpool and pay them Dh. 7000 a month (compared to 12,500 for the native-speaker EFL Foundation people). As if this weren't enough, the campus director has fired several people summarily, including a well-liked Dean of Students while she was out sick with a life-threatening illness! And that was not related to her length of absence; she was to return after only two weeks' sick leave.

In any case, the Mickey Mouse GMU-RAK campus is one thing, but NYU is quite another. In the venerable Barron's Profiles of American Colleges, NYU's admissions selectivity ranking is now in the Most Competitive category, keeping company with such institutions as Amherst, Harvard and all the other Ivies, MIT, Stanford, Swarthmore, etc. etc.

I would say the twin issues of getting quality students and quality professors to come to Abu Dhabi and create a true branch campus of NYU are very unclear indeed. I think they'll have to offer a salary premium in addition to the usual Gulf package if they want to attract a true core of quality professors. Examining the case of the AUS, yes, some US PhDs there like the "freedom from mortgages and freedom from taxes," but an equal number say "it seems like my life is on hold" and others simply cannot stand the Islamic environment.

[veiledsentiments]

Of course the answer to both of this fellow's questions is ... no. Anyone who asks it obviously has never had anything to do with the Gulf educational environment. And then there is this:

"The new campus will be headed by Mari�t Westermann, a Dutch-born specialist in northern European art, who is currently the director of the university�s Institute of Fine Arts."

I'm sure she is a very competent person, but who among us would hire someone with this specialty or credential to head a university in Abu Dhabi?? Should we start a pool on how long she lasts?

That said, if they keep management in their own hands, rather than turning it over to others as happened at GMU-RAK, it might eventually be a decent place to teach.

VS

[globalnomad2]

Yah, they said one reason they chose her was because she was a woman and they wanted to make a point. Bad reasoning. Arabs are already familiar with the concept of women in high-ranking positions, and I don't think it's an issue. And look at the ogre in charge of GMU-RAK--a woman of astoundingly bad judgment. I mean, the quality of management is gender-neutral as far as I'm concerned, so they should concentrate on merit alone when hiring.

[trapezius]

This is very interesting to me.

NYU is one of the best universities in the US, and I hope they keep it Western-managed in the UAE. If it is handed over to Arab-management, it will go down the s***ter.

So GMU-RAK was a failed experiment, huh? I wonder what GMU thinks of this? Don't they care? I am going to email them what you posted in the other thread, and see what their reaction is.

What about:

TAMU-Q (Texas A&M Uni, Qatar) (pays higher in Qatar than in Texas!)
VCU (Virginia Commonwealth Uni, also in Qatar I believe)
Well-Cornell Medical School in Qatar (Cornell Uni is in NY, one of the US's top)
CMU-Qatar (Carnegie-Mellon Univ, again, as good as MIT, Harvard, etc)?

Anybody know what's happening there?

And how come they are all in Qatar? UAE is apparently a lot more progressive than Qatar, from what I know. So how come there is only GMU in the UAE, and not any other branches of US universities? I heard either Qatar or UAE were in negotiation with UVA (University of Virginia, one of the top public unis in the US), and UVA declined to open a campus there, citing concerns about equal opportunity.

[kiefer]

I wonder how they will weed out the ME scholars of the Tom Friedman variety focusing solely on the ME academics of the James Zogby type--if y'know what I mean?

If not, here's a selection of events scheduled at NYU for Saturday, September 1:
9:15 AM Shabbat Orthodox Saturday Morning Services
12:30 PM Shabbat Lunch at Weinstein
2:00 PM Shabbat Trot: Walking Tour of the Lower East Side
8:15 PM Havadallah Service
10:00 PM Shabbat Egalitarian Saturday Morning Services

[globalnomad2]

That's a good point. As for diversity, the student body at the NYU home campus seems to be extremely diverse...48% whites, 16% Asian-Americans, etc. from all 50 states and 800 foreign students from 90 countries.

A campus in Abu Dhabi will have Arab, Indian and Iranian students. Two out of those three will demand A's for not doing any work. If GMU-RAK is any guide, too many F's in a class will indicate BAD TEACHER. As for faculty? Who knows?

There are lots of US branches in Qatar because of the Qatar Foundation, a major government project to upgrade higher education. The approach of the UAE government has always been to build their own colleges and staff them with English-speaking foreigners from around the world.

[Bindair Dundat]

[kiefer]

Sheik Hamad of Qatar has allowed his foreign minister to meet with his Israeli counterpart, and in order to distance his country from the GCC lock step policies originating in Riyadh, he's gone way out on a limb expressing interest in normalizing ties with Israel.

So I imagine research institutes in the US that team up with Israeli scholars would have no problems with extending similar ties to Qatar.

Last year there was a minor broohaha involving plans for (I believe) the University of Pennsylvania to open a campus in Dubai, but those plans ground to a halt because of the UAE's policy of forbidding any association with Israel--even academic ones. Pennsylvania taxpayers had a problem with that, you see.

NYU? Could create a similar ruckus.

[globalnomad2]

A US medical school, moreover, is different from those in most other countries: it is strictly a graduate school; students must have a bachelor's degree and a stellar undergraduate record. Admission to US med schools is so difficult that many, many American students get their MDs overseas (remember Grenada, circa 1984 or whenever that was?). So the Cornell Med school in Qatar must be extremely competitive in terms of admissions, if we're talking about the MD degree. I don't know if they offer undergraduate things such as medical technician.

A year or so ago, Boston Univ. pulled out of talks to set up a campus in Dubai. They went home. They didn't like the sponsor who, they said, seemed interested only in making money off cafeterias and so on. I'm sure there were other factors they preferred not to mention.

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League college and is not especially beholden to Pennsylvania taxpayers in regard to its overseas ventures. Maybe you were thinking of Penn State U., or maybe just the students, alumni and professors at the U of Penn were not feeling warmhearted about setting up a campus where anti-Semitism is the law.

[kiefer]

I stand corrected GN2.

[veiledsentiments]

So, the key to success in these ventures has been shown in Qatar. Full funding by the government... small programs with a limited number of students... usually the best and the brightest from the whole student population of the country, not just the locals.

Also, no local sponsors who often interfere in the educational management in spite of no experience other than their degree in whatever that they may have got overseas.

And NO tuition...? Is that right BD? Or do they have to pay something?

VS

[globalnomad2]

I think you hit the nail on the head, VS. My latest post on the GMU thread discusses this in a bit of detail.

[Bindair Dundat]

[scot47]

Academic education in the Gulf ? A lost cause when you remember that Ezra Pound is (was ?) banned because with a name like that he is clearly a Yidnik.

[veiledsentiments]

Getting rid of the profit motive, and the government paying the tuition to allow a local education of the best and the brightest means that one could actually give them something closer to an actual 'education.'

It probably comes out much cheaper for Qatar than paying for them to study overseas. And it is darn near impossible now for an Arab male of this age group to get an education visa to the US.

VS