Two recent NPR stories highlight the efforts American universities have made to expand their college and graduate programs overseas. This time, it’s not to Europe, or even to Asia, as has been popular in the past, but to the Middle East.
Top U.S. institutions, including Texas A&M, Northwestern University, Georgetown University, and Carnegie Mellon University, have established international outposts that enable international students to attend top programs without worrying about student visas or travel to the U.S. These programs offer American degrees in a non-American location.
Carnegie Mellon, for example, whose home-base is in Pittsburgh, PA, has 11 overseas campuses. (Only one of the 11 (the one located in Qatar) offers undergraduate degrees.)
The Qatar establishment, a complex called “Education City,” is a traditional, Qatari-styled building, with floor seating, a fountain, and lots of natural light. Carnegie Mellon shares this space with a number of other top universities that have expanded their institution abroad.
The diploma that students receive after completing their studies at Education City says “Carnegie Mellon University” on it (or whatever other school is attended on the multi-school campus). As CMU Qatar Dean Chuck Thorpe says, “We’re not like Carnegie Mellon, or inspired by Carnegie Mellon, we ARE Carnegie Mellon.”
Each school in Qatar’s Education City offers a different specialty. CMU’s is business; Cornell’s specialty is medicine; and Northwestern focuses on communications and journalism.
Branching out to faraway places has become a common practice among some of the best universities in America. In fact, the United Arab Emirates, “the latest magnet” in the Middle East, has attracted at least 40 “branch campuses” from schools around the world, many of them from the United States.
The Dubai Academic City in the UAE, not unlike Qatar’s Education City, hosts students from across the Middle East, as well as from Asia, for an American educational experience…no travel to the U.S. necessary.
Michigan State University is one of the more popular schools housed in the multi-school complex in Dubai Academic City.
Abu Dhabi, an emirate located next door to Dubai, is another educational oasis, this time located on a little green island in the middle of downtown. This campus is owned by New York University and is funded by the Abu Dhabi government. The campus, which will open this fall, will serve as one of NYU’s 15 international sites.
Much of the material studied in these off-shore universities is equivalent to that taught on the schools’ home universities. But that’s not to say that programs don’t take advantage of their surroundings by implementing region-specific studies.
For example, a second semester NYU Abu Dhabi course will compare universal gardens, Arab gardens, and Indian gardens. Students will travel to India for first-hand experience and, of course, study the Arabic conception of the garden by traveling around the UAE.
While I certainly see the advantages to the universities opening branches in different parts of the world, I see study in these US satellites as a watered-down version of international study for the Middle Eastern students who do NOT experience life outside their home cultures and countries. Admittedly many of the students at these branch universities are not from Qatar or the hosting country, but they usually are from neighboring countries and similar cultures. They are not stretching in the way that students who study abroad are forced to stretch. My year abroad in college was a marvelous experience, and friends who also did a year abroad also speak highly of the experience — not just the coursework. Although the majority of my classes were in English and in a program for foreign students, attending my host university in Los Angeles or anywhere in the United States would not have been nearly as educational.
For more information, see the NPR articles, “Middle East Woos U.S. Colleges” and “Life On An American Campus In The UAE,” and the Accepted.com blog post, “NYU Students Head East…to the Middle East.”
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