Iran

Government Plans to Allow Foreign Universities

The Iranian government is planning to allow foreign universities to establish branch campuses in the country, an official has revealed. Arsalan Qorbani, Iran’s Deputy Minister of Science, Research and Technology, said that a committee has been formed to work on the plan, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported in December.

“As far as science, research and technology is concerned, we should think globally and Iranian universities should maintain international standards,” he added.

– IRNA
Dec 4, 2008

Student Enrollments Skyrocket

According to an Armenia-based blogger, citing a Tehran Times quote from Iran’s Minister of Science, Research and Technology, Mohammad Mehdi Zahedi, 5 percent of the country’s 70 million people are tertiary students.

The blog, Armenia: Higher Education and Sciences, states that university students comprise approximately 3.5 million of Iran’s 70 million people, and this year that number is expected to top 3.6 million. These numbers are remarkable when one considers that in 2005, the student population was just 2.15 million.

Zahedi is reported to have said that in the last three years there has also been a 100 percent increase in the number of students doing both masters degrees and doctorates; from 20,000 master’s students in 2005 to a current number of 40,000, and from 2,000 to 4,000 doctoral students. He also described a sharp increase in the number of Iran’s faculty members: “There has been over a two-fold increase in the number of faculty members over the past three years.”

A major downside to the positive enrollment numbers is that 30 percent of those currently unemployed are students.

– Armenia: Higher Education and Sciences
January 6, 2009

Iraq

American-style Learning Makes Progress at Year-old University

The American university of Iraq-Sulaimani (AUIS) is just one year old, and is progressing with its mission to reinvent Iraqi university education by producing independent-minded graduates who can help rebuild the nation.

In a region where the authority and opinions of teachers and governments is rarely questioned, AUIS is facing an uphill battle, yet The Christian Science Monitor reports that the university is making strides from its makeshift university classrooms in northern Iraq.

Talking about his students, provost Joshua Mitchell, who is on leave from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. told the Monitor that “the whole of their high school training has been people standing up in front of the room lecturing to them,” adding that “they think they’re supposed to sit there quietly and listen. We’re teaching them in this first year … substance in their course work, but we’re also teaching them how to be a new kind of student.”

In Iraq, as in other parts of the Middle East, the brightest high school students are channeled into engineering and medicine. Mr. Mitchell, who helped start a school of foreign service in Qatar, says the private university aims to produce graduates who will be indispensable to government ministries as well as socially responsible entrepreneurs. The students are expected to engage in community-service projects.

“We are focusing on areas where Iraq’s future depends on critically,” says Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih, the university’s founder. “Management, IT … you have too many engineering faculties but you don’t have a good-quality business school, you don’t have a good-quality IT school.”

There are currently 256 students enrolled at the university, approximately 20 of them in an MBA program, with the rest pursuing undergraduate degrees. Most are Kurdish but some are Iraqi Arab and Turkmen. A new campus is under construction, and officials hope to accommodate 1,000 students in the next four years. At $10,000 per year few Iraqis can afford the tuition but almost all the students are on full scholarships or sponsorships by community and business leaders. Many come from modest backgrounds.

– The Christian Science Monitor
December 8, 2008

U.S. University Enters Green Zone

The University of Maryland University College set up a campus in Iraq in November to offer in-person courses for U.S. troops stationed there, The Washington Post reported. Students arrive at class with both rifles and textbooks, the paper noted. UMUC has a long history of offering educational programs for soldiers, either via distance education or through outposts on or near military bases. Faculty also teach in Afghanistan and other potentially dangerous sites.

In Iraq, seven UMUC professors and four staff members work at two locations, with about 300 students taking accelerated college classes such as American government, math, cultural anthropology and macroeconomics. Students can earn two-year, four-year and master’s degrees. The school is opening three other sites and plans to keep expanding during its five-year contract. The Army pays tuition for its deployed soldiers.

– Washington Post
January 5, 2009

United Arab Emirates

Small U.S. Liberal Arts School for Women Considers Abu Dhabi Campus

According to a report in the Philadelphia Enquirer, the emirate of Abu Dhabi is courting Bryn Mawr College to set up a campus in the United Arab Emirates, and the women’s college is reportedly considering the proposal.

Bryn Mawr’s president, Jane D. McAuliffe, told the newspaper that officials expect to decide by early summer “whether a small liberal-arts college can manage something like this.” A group of faculty members visited Abu Dhabi in fall 2008.

Single-sex colleges are appealing in the socially conservative United Arab Emirates. Several women’s colleges already exist there, including the well-regarded Zayed University.

– Philadelphia Inquirer
December 12, 2008

Arabic Fluency to Become a Requirement

To ensure that nationals of the UAE remain fluent in Arabic, state universities will from September require new students to take a Common Educational Proficiency Assessment examination in the language, reports The National newspaper.

Zayed University, UAE University and the Higher Colleges of Technology will use the results to determine what extra Arabic tuition their students need. The tests are being launched because of concerns that young Emiratis, especially those who study at schools that use English in most lessons, may not have fluency in the language that defines their religion and culture.

– The National
January 12, 2009