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[Noor]

Incentives needed for top academics

July 26. 2009 7:23PM UAE

In its march towards modernity, the UAE has made higher education a top priority. Whether it reforms its educational system, offers scholarships to deserving students, gives accreditation to foreign universities or attracts world-renowned institutions like New York University, the UAE is investing in creating and nurturing the human talent that is so essential to the country�s social and economic development.

But as The National reported yesterday, there is an important component lagging behind: an adequate framework supporting foreign academics in the nation�s leading public institutions. A yet-to-be-published study has found that the lack of long-term job security is preventing these institutions from attracting and retaining foreign professors. This is no minor issue. With the teaching staff at Zayed University, the Higher Colleges of Technology and UAE University overwhelmingly composed of expatriate instructors, and increasing competition among institutions, the national universities will soon find themselves at a serious disadvantage.

In the absence of a system that cultivates loyalty and rewards performance in a satisfactory manner, foreign professors naturally tend to make decisions based on personal preferences and salary considerations rather than committing to the long-term success of their host institutions and pupils. At worse, this dynamic could give birth to a two-tiered educational sector, where foreign institutions cultivate a loyal professorial body with high teaching standards, thus attracting the best students, and national institutions are stuck in a strained cycle of recruitment and retention that distracts them from their primary mission.

The tenure system has been criticised in the West for turning professors into self-absorbed mandarins with little interest in earthly matters. Academics in the UAE engage more in teaching than research, so perhaps the risk that they would abandon their primary duties is small.

The national universities have a distinctly Emirati identity and history that makes them the preferred destination for many nationals. That position must be supported with the resources to assure top-quality instruction. There is agreement within the academic community, as the UAE University professor Abdulkhaleq Abdullah told The National: �If there is money, my priority would be to spend it on existing national universities, not on a private American institution such as NYU � no matter how much prestige that is going to bring.�

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090727/OPINION/707269933/1033/EDITORIALS?template=opinion

[homeless vet]

What the good professor doesn't realize is that having NYU or other US-accredited universities in the UAE means is that the students graduating from such schools would have a much easier time getting accepted to grad schools in the US, UK, Australia, or New Zealand. The Chinese have been encouraging foreign university partnerships like this for quite some time. Many of the students I taught in such a program in China two years ago have gone on to attend MBA programs in the US and UK.

Of course, perhaps the prospect of sending students abroad, particularly females, is something that some might not want to encourage.