From The Chronicle, 28 March 2008 ( Volume 54, Issue 29, Page A26)

USD $750 million is a quite a bit of money...

An Academic Building Boom Transforms the Persian Gulf

Western universities find opportunities as 3 Arab emirates strive to outdo one another

By ZVIKA KRIEGER

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

The tiny desert emirate of Dubai is home to the world's only seven-star hotel, a shopping mall with an indoor ski slope, and the world's largest man-made island.

But just outside the city, in a vast desert punctuated by construction sites, an equally ambitious development is taking place. Between the land set aside for a "silicon oasis" and a lot reserved for shopping outlets lies the future site of International Academic City, Dubai's effort to make its mark in higher education.

As the small states that line the Arabian Peninsula spend their billions of petrodollars picking up luxury hotels, satellite television stations, first-class airlines, and high-tech weaponry, three of the emirates — Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar — have been engaged in a high-stakes game of one-upmanship involving universities, American universities in particular.

The opportunity is ripe: The region's traditional centers of education — Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo, and Damascus — have been eclipsed by war, poverty, and political strife. Recent reports by the United Nations, the World Bank, and others have criticized the educational systems in the gulf as weak and limited in scope, fueling the aggressive push to import high-quality programs.

Qatar began the trend by persuading highly respected American universities like Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Texas A&M, and Northwestern to open programs in its sprawling Education City complex.

Dubai, which had focused most of its energy on technical and vocational schools, is now shifting gears, hoping to capitalize on a recent deal with Michigan State University to attract more American institutions. Abu Dhabi was the last to enter the game, but is making a big splash after striking deals with New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"There is a war out there for talent," says Abdulla Al Karam, director general of Dubai's Knowledge and Human Development Authority, "and we're not going to let everyone else take the best."

Qatar: The First on the Block

Each country has adopted a different model to woo potential academic suitors.

Qatar, less than half the size and with little more than half the population of New Hampshire, is known mostly for its upstart satellite television station, Al-Jazeera. The sleepy peninsula offers little of the buzzing social scene or the thriving businesses that can be found in other gulf countries. But it has succeeded in part by offering foreign institutions money — and lots of it.

"Because other countries are following in our footsteps, we know we have succeeded," says Sheikha Abdulla Al-Misnad, president of the University of Qatar and a member of the country's Supreme Education Council.

In 1995 the country's ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, set up the Qatar Foundation, a multibillion-dollar endowment to fully finance universities that agree to open branches in a complex called Education City.

The government pays full tuition for all Qatari students, who make up about half of the enrollment. Universities have complete control over their annually submitted budget, while all of their costs, including construction and salaries, are shouldered by the foundation. Weill Cornell Medical College, for example, has been promised $750-million over 11 years by the Qatar Foundation.

"Qatar was willing to provide resources to replicate the quality and standards of Cornell University," says Daniel R. Alonso, dean of the medical school's Qatar branch. "That was very persuasive."

American administrators also seem to like the slower, more intimate pace of life in Qatar.

"If I want to see the minister of finance to learn about how the country develops, I can just schedule a meeting with him," says Charles A. Thorpe, dean of Education City's Carnegie Mellon campus, which offers bachelor's degrees in business, computer science, and information systems.

Qatar's multi-university approach to Education City wasn't the government's first choice. According to Fathi Saud, president of the Qatar Foundation, the country had tried to attract a single university that had top programs in many fields. After approaching the University of Virginia — "We heard it was the second-best public university in the country," Mr. Saud says — the foundation's board members were disappointed to learn how inconsistently ranked its programs were.

"They said, 'No, this is not acceptable,'" Mr. Saud recalls. "We wanted Top 10 in every program, and after scanning all the universities, we saw it was almost impossible to find that in a single university."

While Qatar is happy with its arrangement, the structure has its drawbacks. There is little coordination among the various programs, so that a number of universities offer the same core curriculum. And the much-hoped-for synergies between programs like computer science at Carnegie Mellon and engineering at Texas A&M have largely yet to materialize.

"I have never met a student at any of the other schools," says Rashid, a second-year medical student at the Cornell campus, who declined to give his last name. "Each school is like an island."

It's a price that Qatar seems willing to pay. "We certainly recognize the challenges that can be created by narrowing students' exposure to one college and one program," says Abdulla Al-Thani, vice president for education at the Qatar Foundation. But it's more important, he says, that students have "the best of the best in each field."

Dubai: The Education Mall

Quality has not been a strong suit for Qatar's neighbor, Dubai, whose main foreign higher-education project until recently has been Knowledge Village, a sterile cluster of second-tier institutions that one Dubai official referred to as "a mall for education."

Established in 2003, it is home to branches of a number of foreign universities, including Australia's University of Wollongong and Russia's Saint-Petersburg State University of Engineering and Economics, along with the International Institute of Coffee and Barista Training and a hodgepodge of services under the broad rubric of "knowledge."

Knowledge Village offers 100-percent repatriation of assets and profits, tax-free. Unlike Education City, it is set up as a profit-making enterprise. Tecom Investments, the government-owned company that runs the complex, earns money by leasing the buildings to the foreign universities.

That pragmatic approach is the result of Dubai's financial circumstances. It has far less oil wealth than neighboring Qatar. "We don't have a whole lot to give," notes Mr. Al Karam.

Dubai also has a different target audience: its massive expatriate community, which accounts for 90 percent of the emirate's population. Dubai's neighbors have comparably sized expatriate work forces but have done little to foster those communities, and are often ashamed of their very presence.

"It is because of foreigners that our economy is so good," says Mr. Al Karam. "It is because of them that we are where we are today." Although he had never heard of one of the institutions in Knowledge Village, the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, he says, "it's the No. 3 engineering school in India, so it means a lot to Indians. We have to cater to them."

The two complexes also look distinctly different. Education City consists of beautifully designed buildings, and its many Qatari students dress in austere white robes and black gowns. Dubai's Knowledge Village is evocative of a suburban shopping center. Its multinational students rarely mingle across ethnic lines. And they are strictly business.

"We're here to get our degree and that's it," says Lekshmi, a second-year student studying computer science at Mahatma Gandhi University who gave only her first name. "No one comes here for a social life. If you want a real campus experience, go to America."

Dubai officials are proud of their model and say it makes more financial sense than Qatar's. Education City enrolls fewer than 1,000 students, in large part because the emirate's goal is to train its own citizens by offering a limited number of higher-education programs.

Qatar is "spending about $2-billion a year to bring U.S. universities," says Ayoub Kazim, executive director of Knowledge Village. "How many people are they benefiting? What is Qatar offering for average students? You can't have a city of all Harvards."

Yet with the planned creation of a second complex, International Academic City, Dubai has revealed ambitions of greatness, too.

"Our strategy for the next seven years is bigger and better," Mr. Al Karam says. "We want a high-intellect economy, and we can only achieve that with high-caliber universities."

Knowledge Village has already outgrown its meager plot in downtown Dubai and cannot house the laboratories, sporting venues, and student housing that such institutions would demand. Thus a sweeping new complex is being constructed on the outskirts of Dubai.

Dubai sees its deal with Michigan State, the first American university to open a campus in the emirate and the anchor for the new International Academic City, as "a big step forward for us," Mr. Kazim says, and he hopes that "even better American universities will follow."

Michigan State will also be the first nonprofit university in the country. Although it will have to pay for its own operations, it will benefit from a generous line of credit from Tecom Investments. The new complex houses 3,500 students relocated from Knowledge Village, and officials hope to enroll more than 25,000 by 2012.

International Academic City is just one part of Dubai's long-term development plan. It will also place universities within industrial clusters to form symbiotic relationships.

The cluster approach has drawn some heavy hitters. Harvard Medical International, a nonprofit arm of Harvard Medical School that creates partnerships around the world, has established Harvard Medical School Dubai in Dubai Healthcare City. That $1.8-billion complex will contain private hospitals and clinics, pharmaceutical companies, and research centers, as well as residential villas, apartments, and five-star hotels surrounding an artificial lake. Boston University, which was turned off by the profit-driven model of Knowledge Village a few years ago, is opening a dental program in Healthcare City.

Similar arrangements have persuaded the London School of Business & Finance to open shop in the Dubai International Financial Centre and the Rochester Institute of Technology to create a branch in the Dubai Silicon Oasis, a multibillion-dollar technology park.

"Education City on its own is a very interesting project, but to be honest, Dubai just offers so much more," says John K. Hudzik, vice president for global engagement and strategic projects at Michigan State. "Dubai is envisioning itself as a capital for a region that includes not only the Middle East but as far as India and Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and even East Africa."

Other university officials say they like Dubai because it is constantly abuzz with fashion shows, art exhibitions, trade fairs, and chic nightlife.

"Dubai is the new New York," says Denis Ravizza, the associate dean of the Dubai branch of ESMOD, the elite French fashion school. "We knew something needed to be done here,"

Abu Dhabi: Money to Spend

Dubai may be the most developed of the gulf emirates, but not for long. Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, is estimated to be home to 10 percent of the world's oil, worth as much as $3-trillion. And it is putting that money to use.

"Others may have the vision, but they don't have the resources to do it," says Zaki Nusseibeh, deputy chairman of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage and a member of the Board of Governors of Paris-Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi.

Certainly financial considerations are among the primary reasons that most universities in Abu Dhabi have decided to open up shop there.

"It is a pity, but I must say that we are only in Abu Dhabi because Abu Dhabi proposed to pay for all of our expenses," says Daniel Ballard, director general of the Sorbonne in Abu Dhabi. "If we got the same offer from Doha or Cairo, we probably would have said 'yes,' too."

Dubai, in fact, lost New York University to Abu Dhabi because the university demanded $50-million upfront in addition to payment for construction and operating expenses. "We just don't have that kind of money," said an official at Knowledge Village.

John Sexton, NYU's president, says Abu Dhabi's ambition is what attracted the university: "Every conversation with them was like 'I see you and raise you one.'"

So far, Abu Dhabi seems to be trying a little of everything. NYU is building a comprehensive liberal-arts university on Saadiyat Island, a $28-billion development that will house branches of the Louvre and the Guggenheim museums, a performing-arts center in negotiations to be run by Lincoln Center, a maritime museum, and an exhibitions pavilion. The buildings have been designed by world-famous architects like Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid.

The French business school Insead has started an M.B.A. program in the emirate, and the Johns Hopkins University just announced a new graduate program in public health there.

The new Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, for which MIT will recruit faculty members, train instructors, and design curricula, will train graduate students only. And it will be housed in a six-square-kilometer, zero-carbon, zero-waste "green community" that will be powered by a 500-megawatt solar power plant.

"It's an experimental prototype city of tomorrow," says Russel Jones, president of the Masdar institute and a former MIT professor.

The complex will also house up to 1,500 technology companies (tax-free and with full foreign ownership, of course) — a model that may inspire the same sort of synergy that exists between Stanford and Silicon Valley or MIT and Kendall Square, Mr. Jones says.

"Dubai lives by switching hats," says Mr. Jones. "Abu Dhabi is building a real intellectual base."

Abu Dhabi is also creating its own version of Education City, called University City, which will house the Sorbonne campus, the United Arab Emirates' flagship public institution, Zayed University, and various other universities with which the emirate is in discussion.

Some foreign academics say Abu Dhabi now has the most prestigious roster of institutions in the region.

"In Qatar you realize there is no uniformity of standards," says one Yale administrator, who was involved in the university's negotiations with Abu Dhabi to open an arts center there, but recently suspended discussions when the emirate demanded the university offer a degree program. "Georgetown is there, but next to it is Virginia Commonwealth University, which is a nice little place, but those two don't go in the same breath. It's not as if Saadiyat Island is doing a Guggenheim and then the South Cleveland symphony next door."

Can It Work?

Opening branches of marquee American universities may improve their international cachet, but is it the best way for these gulf states to improve their education systems? Many experts are skeptical, saying that what works in America won't necessarily work in the Middle East, nor necessarily be in students' best interests.

Indeed, a new report by the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute, commissioned by Qatar's Supreme Education Council, warned that "investment in high-quality undergraduate education and graduate education will serve a relatively narrow segment of society — the most academically talented individuals. In a country such as Qatar, which has a small population, it is important to provide education and training opportunities to all types of individuals."

Mourad Ezzine, a Middle East specialist for the World Bank who oversaw its recent report on education in the Arab world, echoes that concern.

"A good university is not just a university that borrows a curriculum or a few teachers from another prestigious university," he says. He also noted that there is a limited pool of high-caliber students in the gulf, and that eventually the region may have difficulty attracting enough American professors to staff these new programs.

The emirates may also be getting more than they bargained for by introducing Western institutions with no indigenous roots.

"They are going to have a huge generation of people coming out of these institutions that will not be connected in any kind of organic way to society as a whole, a generation of people who can't even speak to their parents," says Mary Ann Tetreault, a professor of international affairs and a gulf-region specialist at Trinity University, in Texas, who spent a year as a Fulbright fellow in the gulf and has studied the new universities opening in the region. "It is going to have massive social repercussions — some positive, but definitely some negative as well."

Ms. Tetreault also says American universities are deluding themselves if they think they can operate in the region according to their usual standards.

"I could teach light versions of my courses there, but I couldn't teach the way I teach my students at Trinity or even the way I taught my students at a state university," she says. "You are putting in a program that kids can't succeed at, because they are not up to speed. They have basic skill issues," including poor study habits and limited math and science skills.

Gulf leaders say they are aware of those limitations but don't have the time to build an indigenous system from scratch.

"We have an urgent need for quality programs that will produce students right away," says Mr. Al-Thani, vice president for education at the Qatar Foundation. Whatever the outcome, there is no doubt that the gulf states are committed to bringing new life to once-stagnant higher-education systems.

"This can't be anything but good for the region," says Carnegie Mellon's Mr. Thorpe. "We are all part of a larger Arab renaissance."