Regional

Education Diplomacy with the Middle East a Must for the U.S.

The idea of “education diplomacy” has “really arrived” at the highest levels of American foreign policy, a US State Department official told an international higher education conference in February.

Meghann Curtis, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Academic Programs at the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, said that the bureau had always been driven by the notion that “we’d be a more stable, peaceful and prosperous world if we could all get to know one another”. But she said that the issue had recently become “incredibly important”.

Engagement with the Middle East and North Africa, and other Muslim-majority countries, was a top priority to address a “big deficit” in mutual understanding, she said in a round-table session, “The importance of academic exchange in foreign affairs” at the Association of International Education Administrators annual conference in New Orleans.

“I was having a conversation with folks at the White House, in the policy shop over there, and this idea of education diplomacy has really arrived,” she said, adding: “If you look at any strategic dialogue we have with any significant partner around the world increasingly there is education track of that dialogue.”

– Times Higher Education
February 23, 2013

Iraq

A Look at the Rebuilding Effort in Iraqi Higher Education

The Institute of International Education co-sponsored its ninth Iraq Scholar Rescue Project conference in Erbil, Iraq in February and with 200 Iraqi scholars in attendance, it was the biggest such academic conference to date since the program began in 2007 (five years after the 2002 founding of the IIE Scholar Rescue Fund.)

In a recent IIE blog post, executive director of the Scholar Rescue Fund, Jim Miller, noted that since 2003, hundreds of Iraqi scholars have been killed, targeted specifically because they were academics. Thousands have been threatened and forced to flee the country. IIE launched the Iraq Scholar Rescue Project in response to these threats. As of today, the project has assisted more than 265 of Iraq’s most senior and threatened professors and researchers in a wide range of academic disciplines by getting them out of immediate danger and into temporary academic positions at universities, colleges and other institutions of higher learning in 14 countries – with a majority staying in the Middle East and North Africa region. Since then, 60 of those scholars have returned to Iraq and are teaching again.

Those who have not yet been able to return attend the conferences and network with their colleagues. Scholars who must remain outside of Iraq work to help their colleagues within Iraq connect with the outside world. In doing so, they are helping to internationalize and advance higher education in the country.

This most recent conference on best practices in modern teaching methodology and excellence in university teaching had a special focus on ways that students and professors are using technology at universities around the world.

Jim Miller concluded in his blog post that there are still many challenges facing scholars and higher education in Iraq. Security remains a serious issue, blackouts are commonplace and academics are still threatened. Miller went on to note that “it is crucial that we continue to support Iraqi scholars and assist them in not just rebuilding their lives, but rebuilding higher education in their home country and connecting it to the world.”

– Institute of International Education
February 12, 2013

Saudi Arabia

Caltech President to Take Over Leadership of KAUST

Jean-Lou Chameau, president of the California Institute of Technology since 2006, has announced that he will leave the institution to become the next president of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), in Saudi Arabia. KAUST, which began life with a US$10 billion endowment, enrolled its first students in 2009 and seeks to become one of the leading research universities in the world.

In a letter reflecting on his tenure at Caltech, Mr. Chameau said he would dedicate his energy to leading the Saudi institution “toward achieving its bold vision.” He will take over from the incumbent president of KAUST, Choon Fong Shih, who was recruited from the National University of Singapore as the institution’s first leader.

– KAUST News Release
February 19, 2013

King Abdullah Scholarship Program Extended for 5 More Years

Saudi leader King Abdullah Bin Abdullaziz issued a formal approval in February for a five-year extension of his namesake scholarship program. The King Abdullah Scholarship program started in 2006. Since then, over 47,000 Saudi students have graduated from western universities under the program. Currently, there are more than 180,000 young Saudis studying oversees, with over 70,000 of them in the United States.

The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubair, told the Al Arabiya Arab in America website in February that U.S. Homeland Security believes that Saudi nationals living in America have the least legal problems of any foreign nationals in the country.

In a meeting with the heads of Saudi student associations in the U.S., Jubair said: “There are over 70,000 Saudi students here, and with their dependents they reach over 90,000.” Jubair added: “We have only seen few problems that are criminal, the rest are mostly educational and traffic problems that can happen to any other people”

– Al Arabiya
February 24, 2013

United Arab Emirates

Students at International Branch Campuses Largely Happy with Their Educational Experiences

A recent survey of over 250 students at international branch campuses in the United Arab Emirates has found a general level of satisfaction with the educational experience, with just five areas that received relatively high proportions of negative feedback

Just over one in five students did not agree that they had as much contact with their lecturers as they had had with their teachers at school and just under 18 percent felt that they were not getting as much contact with their lecturers as they needed. Out of 49 total questions, there were a further three areas related to academics that received a negative rating of close to 20 percent. All of the other items with high proportions of negative scores fell into the ‘facilities and quality of social life’ category.

The authors of the study, Student perception of study at international branch campuses: implications for educators and college managers, published in University of Wollongong Research Online, conclude that “while the findings of this study might refute some of the criticisms of international branch campuses to be found in the literature regarding quality and other issues, including political and ideological concerns, there still remains considerable scope for international branch campuses to improve their operations.”

– University of Wollongong in Dubai
December 2012