NYU in the Emirates?

July 20, 2009 3:58 PM

Is the world ready for a global university? Apply now! (via)

About every other Friday for most of the past year, John Sexton, the president of New York University, would duck away from his offices above Washington Square to teach a small seminar class on the American separation of church and state. Sexton has always maintained a full professor's teaching load, which is unusual for the chief executive of a large university. What was even more unusual in this case was that the class met 11,000 kilometres away, in Abu Dhabi.

posted by oldleada (21 comments total)

Lots of universities have partnerships with universities in the mideast. My take has always been that the mideastern universities are trying to buy some respectability. e.g University of Waterloo UAE in Dubai, University of Calgary, Quatar. Not sure if they're doing remote teaching.
posted by GuyZero at 4:17 PM on July 20

Global University, huh? Can't wait for the big homecoming game against Mars. Go Fighting Sagans!
posted by PlusDistance at 4:20 PM on July 20 [8 favorites]

Will there be a global frat? Where the whole planet pukes in unison to Louie Louie? Because that'd be a touching moment.
posted by jonmc at 4:21 PM on July 20

Also, NYU is a fine school and all, but good luck displacing the existing top 10 global schools. Schools like Harvard have a brand image that is nigh-on impossible to displace.
posted by GuyZero at 4:22 PM on July 20

Can't wait for the big homecoming game against Mars.

WE ARE BARSOOM
posted by hifiparasol at 4:24 PM on July 20

I don't know about global this and that, but my colleagues at NYU sometimes refer to the place as "Bulgaria" in deference to its highly competent provision of basic services and facilities.
posted by fourcheesemac at 4:37 PM on July 20

Global State University, on the other hand, is more like a safety school.
posted by qvantamon at 4:38 PM on July 20

Can't wait for the big homecoming game against Mars.

WE WILL
WE WILL
TERRAFORM!
TERRAFORM!
posted by Netzapper at 4:41 PM on July 20

Can't wait for the big homecoming game against Mars.

Looking too far ahead. We have to get past Omicron Perseus 3, Rigel 7 and... hey, why's Pluto on the schedule? I though they got knocked down to Division w!
posted by wendell at 4:47 PM on July 20 [1 favorite]

Man, I hope they don't teach Computer Science at Global State University because those guys are doin' it wrong.
posted by GuyZero at 5:04 PM on July 20 [1 favorite]

From the article:

First announced in October 2007, NYU Abu Dhabi has begun to take shape over the past year. Construction is nearly complete on the school’s interim downtown campus, where the first class of students will convene in the autumn of 2010.

This is bordering on a self-link - because I worked in support of the project for two to four years, depending on how you're counting - but over at Weill Cornell Medical College, we graduated 15 M.D.s from our Qatar branch in May of 2008. They were the first US-accredited M.D. degrees granted on foreign soil.

There are a lot of schools over in the middle east now, as GuyZero mentioned. Besides WCMC, CMU, Texas A&M, and Georgetown all have branches in Qatar. I'm not entirely sure why NYU feels compelled to offer liberal arts degrees in UAE, but that's their call I suppose.
posted by Remy at 5:11 PM on July 20

> My take has always been that the mideastern universities are trying to buy some respectability. e.g University of Waterloo UAE in Dubai (...)

Now I don't know about NYU, but the University of Waterloo has made no secret of doing it for the money. I haven't seen any other justification. (Many people on campus are upset about human rights in Dubai, and want UW to have nothing to do with it.)
posted by parudox at 5:46 PM on July 20

Abu Dhabi?

My guess is the UAE is offering pretty big subsidies and these schools are jumping on it. This kind of clustering doesn't happen by accident. This "global crossroads" stuff makes no sense. Stuff will travel through Russia and central Asia, and across the Mediterranean.
posted by delmoi at 5:55 PM on July 20

Yeah, this is nothing new.

Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar
posted by emelenjr at 8:08 PM on July 20

Interesting article. Well, if America is gonna start to offshore their educational institutions as the article notes, then they darn well better not be exporting grade inflation.

in 2001 Mansfield, spoke up about Harvard's policy "in which one-fourth of all grades given to undergraduates are now A's, and another fourth are A-'s. ". Yep.

He goes on to note "The private grades, from the course assistants and me, will be less flattering. " Of course employers and graduate schools only see the public grades.

This problem isn't isolated solely to Harvard; gradeinflation.com tracks 210 schools and over two million students with a clear long term trend :

"In the 1930s, the average GPA at American colleges and universities was about 2.35, a number that corresponds with data compiled by W. Perry in 1943. By the 1950s, the average GPA was about 2.52."

and notes that grades are increasing at "a rate of about 0.10 to 0.15 increase in GPA per decade"

I teach Econometrics part time at three Universities here in London, and anytime I hear an American accent during the introduction week I shudder.

Almost always someone doing a semester abroad, almost always someone who is used to straight A grades, and almost always someone who will get a harsh lesson that we don't believe in Bell Curve Grading and if you pass my class this year I can easily compare your performance with the class last year, or the class in five years time.

Sometimes nobody in my class gets an A. I've never had a class where everyone failed (other profs have) but even so, some of those American kids doing a semester abroad just don't get it and complain to admin that my grading is the problem.

No, it's grade inflation.
posted by Mutant at 11:53 PM on July 20 [1 favorite]

I teach Econometrics part time at three Universities here in London, and anytime I hear an American accent during the introduction week I shudder.
...
we don't believe in Bell Curve Grading and if you pass my class this year I can easily compare your performance with the class last year, or the class in five years time.

To be fair, some of us here in America, even recent students, are as annoyed at grade inflation as you are. Especially those of us who would be making excellent grades without the help.

Especially annoying is the tendency for American students to wheedle and whine for grades. It disgusts me. It's one thing to argue that the professor made a mistake in grading; or that your answer is unorthodox but correct, and so deserves credit. However, I was forced to suppress physical rage every time one of my fellow students would walk to the prof's desk and explain that she felt her answer, the incorrectness of which invariably went unchallenged during this discourse, should "still be worth more credit than that; I mean, I worked hard on this".

It galls me to no end to think that I graduated with a 3.4, while the girl who is literally and completely incompetent in the field for which we trained graduated with a 4.0. Why? Because I had too much pride to beg for credit I didn't deserve.

It was even more infuriating when I TA'd classes in compsci. I'd receive an exercise that neither worked nor compiled, which would generally receive a very generous grade of around 2/10 if it at least looked like a program to solve the assigned problem. These same people would send emails, call, and whine in my office endlessly about how I was grading unfairly. Because an uncompilable string of punctuation-strewn gibberish should be equal in value to a flawless and elegant running program. I mean, they tried really hard.

Also, American grade inflation is not a result of bell curve grading. While it's certainly true that professors here call what they do "curving", it's quite literally a euphemism for grade inflation (or translation). A true bell curve assigns F's to the worst students, A's to the best students, and places the 95% of the population between a D and a B. American students hate grading on the bell curve worse than anything, even your European sane grading system, because it ensures that most of them will receive C's even if they did quite excellent work. [My father actually had an advanced chemistry course with a prof who graded on the curve. The course had three people in it. As must be the case with the curve, one person got an F (inflated to a D for kindness), one person got a C, and one person got an A, despite them all having quite mastered the material.]

What the modern American professor calls a "curve" happens like this: say the test is worth 100 points. The highest grade in the class was 128* points, so ignore that as an outlier, as well as the two people who got 94 and 97 points respectively--buncha smartasses. The next highest grade is an 82. So, 100 - 82 is 18. So, now add 18 points to everybody's grade. In mathematical terms, this is a translation, not a curve fitting. It is literally grade inflation.

This whole practice invariably irked the shit out of me, since I was the one getting the 128 in the first place... and then, thanks to the professor "being fair to everybody else", I look pretty average.

*You get 128/100 by answering all the regular questions, all the bonus questions, and then, since you finished the whole test in about twenty-five minutes, going back and answering all of the other options in the "choose one of the following problems to solve" sections.
posted by Netzapper at 12:57 AM on July 21 [1 favorite]

Yeah, this is nothing new.

Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar

But VCU-Qatar, like most of the other American "universities" in the Gulf, is simply a branch campus that gives specific pre-professional degrees (in this case, in design) to local students. NYU is talking about cloning itself as a university, operating a fully-fledged campus, and recruiting students from around the world. It may not be a good idea, but it's a hell of a lot more wild than opening a diploma mill in the Gulf to boost the bottom line.
posted by sloweducation at 1:13 AM on July 21

Netzapper -- "Especially annoying is the tendency for American students to wheedle and whine for grades. "

I'm American and at all three institutions I'm generally the one who is tapped to explain to the semester abroad students that "this is a different country" and "they do things differently here", or other such self evident variants. Amazing that many kids going abroad to study for a term expect things academic to be exactly the same as back home. Meaning high grades are the norm, and a sufficient level of nagging will magically transform a failing mark into a passing score.

And here grading is done by panel; a paper graded by myself is next second graded by my manager. We meet to discuss, perhaps change our respective grades a little, then average and final mark. Any grade awarded above an 85% is subject to an additional round of scrutiny and "are we sure?" introspective queries, with another pair of profs asked to review. This, in a very, very mathematical subject but one where market dynamics must be considered and subjective choices (e.g., choise of model, discount rates used, etc) both made and justified. There is an art to the science.

All failing papers are also graded by an external examiner, with a small percentage of passing papers being spot checked by the external as well. Its both a rigorous and fair system.

Only then are grades awarded. So no matter what emotions are deployed (everytime I think I've experienced them all someone surprises me) in the quest to "change my grade" I have precisely ZERO latitude personally, and if they've got any complaints they seriously have to see Academic Standards who will, in a merciless bureaucratic manner (and I mean that with maximum respect), do absolutely NOTHING for them over a period of many months until they finally return to America.

Totally appreciate your frustration, I'm just grumbling a little as I've got to see a student this afternoon who has requested a meeting to discuss the "unfair" grade received.

If only that person read MeFi.
posted by Mutant at 2:32 AM on July 21

While there are other western universities in the middle east, what NYU is attempting do is fundamentally different and, IF successful, could fundamentally transform the way "a university" is conceived of.

Reading the thread, many of the commenters need to RTFA a little more. What NYU is attempting is way beyond a satellite campus.
posted by LooseFilter at 10:10 AM on July 21

Limkokwing University's doing this - starting in Malaysia and opening clones in London, Bostwana, and possibly New York. The response hasn't been so great.

There's plenty of US/Australia branches in Malaysia and Singapore too.
posted by divabat at 11:50 PM on July 22

For those still interested in this one, the paper seems to have published a second article expanding on the same subject: "The Blueprint".
posted by sloweducation at 9:40 AM on July 24