Anybody who is involved in higher education in the Arabian Gulf right now knows that there's quite a rivalry going on between a few of the Gulf states to establish who has the best universities. Qatar was the first to invite American universities to the region with Virginia Commonwealth University and the establishment of Education City. I believe the second (correct me if I'm wrong) was Dubai with Knowledge City, and now Abu Dhabi is putting a great deal of money into getting prestigious universities such as NYU as well. The recent article in the March 28 publication of the Chronicle of Higher Education did not help to quell this rivalry. In fact, the other 4 articles in that issue are really churning up some controversy. With a headline like "An Academic Building Boom Transforms the Persian Gulf: Western universities find opportunities as 3 Arab emirates strive to outdo one another," how could it be constructive?
First of all, the opening paragraphs don't help to clarify information: "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." High-technology weaponry? Last time I checked, the most high-technology anybody was getting was with internet intelligence and virtual banking.
Second, the article is incredibly disrespectful of the universities in Education City. It mentions "highly respected American universities like Cornell, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Texas A&M, and Northwestern" being in Qatar with absolutely no mention of VCUQ. It's not that this statement is accurate or inaccurate, but I can assure you that none of these aforementioned universities, or any other university in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, would be there if VCU hadn't taken the risk to come here over 10 years ago. Their decision was more risky than any other of these universities' decisions because they didn't know what it would do to their resources, faculty, or home campuses and for them to make that decision without knowing a whole lot was the most gutsy of anybody's. The comment by an auspiciously unnamed "Harvard administrator" just added insult to injury regarding this topic exactly "In Qatar you realize there is no uniformity of standards... 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." Really?!?! How high can you possibly put your nose in the air? What the article doesn't give is the background of Harvard having been snubbed on a bid to join Education City.
Third, several times in the article, information is severely misrepresented. For instance, getting a quote from any med school student , in Qatar or in the US, is hardly representative of the average engaged student. So saying that all students at Education City live in silos based on a Cornell students' comment that "I have never met a student at any of the other schools" is completely ridiculous. What average med student do you know that ventures to take classes outside of their department in their own university, much less take classes at other universities in the area? I can tell you for sure that they've never met other students from other campuses because they a) don't live in the dorms, b) don't have room in their schedule to take classes in other universities, and/or c) Cornell doesn't offer any classes students from other universities would want to take because they are all specifically for med students. So to make a judgment about all students in Education City based on a med student's daily life is like saying that all dogs are hyperactive based on the temperament of a Jack Russell terrier.
Of course I can only speak to the misrepresentations in the article regarding Qatar and Education City because that's where I work and live and know what actually goes on daily. There are also some things in the article I certainly agree with like the concern that a large portion of the population is being missed in the higher education system by only having 6+ top-notch universities and providing no university environment for the average student. The problem is that there are enough fallacies and misrepresentations in the article that it gives an inaccurate picture of higher education in this region. And for this to be on the front page of the Chronicle of Higher Education, and possibly the first/only time people in the states will have heard anything of substance about what we do here, is incredibly dangerous. It only reinforces existing stereotypes of this region - that there are ridiculous amounts of money here and that it is often frivolously and rashly spent. If anything, higher education in this region of the world has the opportunity and responsibility to break down stereotypes and help educate people all over the world, and specifically in America where they need it the most, about this region and the people who live in it.
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