International News

United StatesForeign campuses teething painsIn a kind of educational gold rush, American universities are competing to set up outposts in countries with limited higher education opportunities. American universities ƒš‚ as well as Australian and British ones, which also offer instruction in English ƒš‚ are starting, or expanding hundreds of programmes and partnerships in booming markets such as China, India and Singapore.And many are now considering full-fledged foreign branch campuses, particularly in oil-rich West Asia. Already, students in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar can attend an American university without the expense, culture shock or post-9/11 visa problems.”Where universities are heading now is toward becoming global universities,” says Howard Rollins, the former director of international programmes at Georgia Tech, which has degree programmes in France, Singapore, Italy, South Africa and China, and plans for India. “Weƒšžll have more and more universities competing internationally for resources, faculty and the best students.”The demand from overseas is huge. At the University of Washington, the administrator in charge of overseas programmes receives about a proposal a week. “Itƒšžs almost like spam,” says the official, Susan Jeffords, whose position as vice-provost for global affairs was created just two years ago.Traditionally, top universities built their international presence through study-abroad sites, research partnerships, faculty exchanges and joint degree programmes offered with foreign universities. Yale has dozens of research collaborations with Chinese universities.Overseas branches, with the same requirements and degrees as the home campuses, are a newer ƒš‚ and riskier ƒš‚ phenomenon. While New York Universityƒšžs Persian Gulf campus in Abu Dhabi is on the horizon, George Mason University is up and running ƒš‚ though not at full speed ƒš‚ in Ras al Khaymah, another one of the emirates.George Mason, a public university in Fairfax, Virginia, arrived in the Gulf in 2005 with a tiny language programme intended to help students achieve college-level English skills and meet the universityƒšžs admission standards for the degree programmes that were beginning the next year. George Mason expected to have 200 undergraduates in 2006, and grow from there. But it enrolled nowhere near that many, then or now. It had just 57 degree students ƒš‚ three in biology, 27 in business and 27 in engineering at the start of this academic year, joined by a few more students and programmes this semester.The Ras al Khaymah campus has had a succession of deans. Simple tasks such as ordering books take months, in part because of government censors. Local licensing, still not complete, has been far more rigorous than expected. And it has not been easy to find interested students with the Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and English skills that George Mason requires for admission.Aisha Ravindran, a professor from India with no previous connection to George Mason, teaches students the same communications class required for business majors at the Virgina campus ƒš‚ but in the Arabian desert, it lands differently. Ravindran uses the same slides, showing emotions and lists of non-verbal taboos to spread the American business ideal of diversity and inclusiveness. She emphasises the…