The global academic marketplace
NYU and its nine international campuses: ‘of the world’
Yale and National University of Singapore: the odd couple
The September 23rd, 2011 Economist contains an ad from the Qatar Foundation citing the efforts of Tammi Moe of Virginia Commonwealth University, who is traveling the globe, assembling an archive history of Qatar’s cultural history. Yes, Qatar is home to Virginia Commonwealth University’s international satellite campus, which specializes in teaching fine arts. You might not even know where Virginia Commonwealth is located in the United States (it’s in Richmond, Virginia) but in Qatar it’s in Education City in Doha, Qatar’s capital. Quaint, isn’t it?
No Qatar, and VCU has plenty of company: the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, the international affairs school of Georgetown University, computer science and business schools from Carnegie Mellon (which is also about to open an engineering school in Rwanda this coming year), engineering from Texas A&M, and a journalism school from Northwestern.
In the not too distant past, international exchange programs and junior year abroad were the extent of US university international exposure. Now, with the demand for high-level US universities seemingly insatiable, having a satellite campus is becoming the standard path for many US universities to approach international expansion. The lingua franca of post-secondary education is English, and US, British, and Australian universities are scampering to service the voracious worldwide appetite.
NYU under the direction of John Sexton, the president, has morphed itself into a university of the world. NYU, on its supplement, calls itself a global network, and it does have a set of constituent campuses in Buenos Aires, Florence, Accra, Ghana, London, Madrid, Paris, Prague, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. You might well gain admissions to NYU, but be asked to spend your freshman year, not in Washington Square in Manhattan, but in London or one of NYU’s other locations. A large portion of international Korean applicants who were admitted last year, spent their entire freshman year in London. Most of their courses were English classes with a rigorous blend of writing, reading, and discussion groups.
Among all these campuses NYU sends a portion of the faculty from Washington Square, though a larger share of the top faculty is now working in the Abu Dhabi campus which began classes in fall of 2010. The Abu Dhabi satellite campus received $50 million in funding from Prince Zayed of Abu Dhabi. Moreover, while the NYU main campus is fairly selective with its admissions, admitting about a third of applicants, the NYU-Abu Dhabi campus students were hand selected by the NYU admissions office from a pool of 9,048 applications: only 150 were admitted, for an admissions rate of 1.7%. The class average SAT scores for critical reading was 715, and math 730. More interesting, NYU-Abu Dhabi students are eligible for ‘loan-free full scholarships’ of $62,000, which includes the cost of two round trip tickets home and a $2,000 stipend’ (‘NYU’s Perilous Adventure in Abu Dhabi, at http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/07/nyus_perilous_adventure_in_abu.html ) Obviously a lot is riding on this venture for NYU (and Abu Dhabi).
Yale University, for years, has done joint research projects with Chinese research universities; two key projects include Yale’s Joint Center for Biomedical Research at Fudan University in Shanghai, and a joint venture in Agro-biotechnology at Peking University. Richard Levine, the president of Yale, and a noted economist with an expertise in ‘campus internationalization’ (The Great Brain Race, by Ben Wildavsky, Princeton University Press, 2010, p. 32) is now taking the next logical step, by opening up a satellite campus with National University of Singapore. While this plan received little concern from Yale Alumni, many Yale faculty members have voiced issues about the ‘repressive regime’ of Singapore and its inability to ensure academic freedom and non-discrimination—especially for homosexual faculty members.
One student who is applying to Yale National University College of Singapore makes his case at http://kentridgecommon.com/?p=13275. In essence, he sees great potential in a cross cultural, liberal arts, integrated curriculum. Further, he knows the race to educate the minds of the world is an international one. The spread of international satellite campuses is offering variety and perspectives never dreamt of before. This is just the beginning.
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