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Cal to open campus in Saudi Arabia |
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By ASMA NEMATI, Guest Writer
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BERKELEY, Calif. – Following Georgetown, Northwestern and Duke University’s successful programs, UC Berkeley is the current candidate coveting an important deal in the Middle East for an exchange of nothing but education. Well, not entirely.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the deal is worth “a substantial amount.” Although the exact worth is unknown, rumors suggest it is somewhere in the millions. That is not a surprising sum for the oil-rich state of Saudi Arabia, however. The plan is for UC Berkeley to build an engineering graduate school there, along with everything a top-tier school has to offer: sharp professors, an intellectual ambiance and education for all.
Some UCB professors, however, are skeptical. According to the Contra Costa Times, professors within the mechanical engineering department showed “concern” about the deal, “particularly about academic freedom and gender and religious discrimination.”
But with the constant cuts to the education budget, UC Berkeley — along with other universities that have opened or are in the process of opening up education “satellites” in the Middle East — is more than willing to fill that cash void.
This deal is not a new one. In Qatar’s Education City, you can find satellites of Texas A&M, Georgetown and Carnegie Mellon University. With professors rotating between their American and Middle Eastern pupils to infuse them with knowledge, the students will have American-style education at their fingertips. This is especially important for women, as they won’t need to travel abroad with escorts to obtain education.
The deal gets even sweeter in some cases, such as Singapore. Singapore National University’s one-year-old medical school, built with the assistance of Duke University, will offer Duke-NUS degrees for its graduates.
With more kids in college at home, Middle East nations hope to depend less on foreign skill and assimilate their society with the rest of the world.
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