I heard on the radio today that George Washington University is creating a special distance learning program for kids from the Saudi royal family (Washington Post). The Saudi kids get an "American education": maybe a few professors will fly out, lots of lectures on the web, and then GWU diplomas after four years. GWU gets lots o' cash, and insist nothing's wrong with this deal, they've simply "responded creatively to an opportunity."
Compare this with the opportunity Cornell responded creatively to in 2001, with the Weill Medical College in Qatar, the first American med school in the Persian Gulf. They give out regular Cornell med degrees (no "Qatar" on the diploma) and swear their admissions & academic standards are every bit as rigorous as they are in New York. Cornell first announced this idea while I was still at Cornell, and it seemed kind of odd to me: why Qatar? What an odd tiny little country. Why not Liechtenstein or Andorra or maybe San Marino? And then I read on in the NYTimes article to find that Qatar was paying for the whole thing, including $750 mil in operating costs for the first 11 years, so that made a bit more sense.
So, uhm, I'd like to send a cheer of "Go Big Red!" to Doha, and "Go GW Colonials!" to Riyadh.
Posted by cce at July 29, 2003 10:40 PM | TrackBack(University == Corporation) returns true; always has.
Bastards make me pay for damages to dorm that were already there when I moved in, then probably won't fix them and charge the next batch of people even more.
Posted by: julian at July 30, 2003 04:04 PMhey, if IBM won't pay enough to cover your costs for a Masters, you can always ask for Cornell to send you to Qatar.
Posted by: sophie at July 31, 2003 12:05 PMYeah, apparently this is the hip thing to do these days. I remember thinking this was a bit odd myself, but I'm also no stranger to the notion of the university-as-corporation thing... although as long as the quality of the education is good, I suppose I'm not entirely opposed to it... or maybe I am... hrm...
Posted by: Mike at July 31, 2003 05:29 PM