N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi Scours Globe for Top Students | Hacker News Reader

N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi Scours Globe for Top Students

nytimes.com

13 pointseplanit11 comments

The middleast realizes that education is important for their growth once they run out of oil. They notice the success of israel and are trying to mimic it by creating institutes of excellence, but what they dont realize is there is no way they can mimic the culture of israel, which is more responsible for their success than anything else.

Its like u can build buildings in Bangalore but u cant replicate the culture of the valley. Bangalore ended up being a sweatshop where technology companies set up back end offices.

More over when half your population is not considered equal to the other half and is considered not ok for smart jobs or serious careers, I think that's a serious disadvantage human capital wise. Personally I don't think these programs will do any good.

Also, most of these programs are really new and I doubt if they will match the quality of the parent programs.

Disclaimer- I was offered to interview for one such program last year and I did not take it up.

As international as they try to make it, I do not expect it to beat the flood of global students applying to USA schools, some departments in US schools, especially in the master's/Ph.D levels are a lot more international then you would expect.

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/People/Students/MEngStudents/index...

wtf? WHY DOWNVOTED? I WAS PROVIDING GOOD REFERENCE FOR ABOVE COMMENT!

Well, they don't have to "beat the flood of global students applying to USA schools", they just have to attract enough good students. There's a large pool out there after all.

Why Abu Dhabi? If you're really going for an "international" school, why wouldn't you pick somewhere a bit more stable? If neutrality is key, then I'd choose someplace like Geneva.

Because the Abu Dhabi government is picking up the tab.

As starkfist mentioned, Abu Dhabi is picking up the tab. The other reason would be the level of freedom that NYU is being given in designing the curriculum. Places like Geneva have strict guidelines on curriculum. While I'm sure the Emirates have curriculum guidelines as well, I see them being much more open to trying something new.

It's a university administrator's dream.

Also, U of Waterloo now has an Engineering campus in Dubai. http://www.uae.uwaterloo.ca/ It caused quite the discussion when I was in school at the time.

What's unstable about Abu Dhabi?

It's strong economy is based on a limited resource that much of the world is shifting away from. And its social policies remain incompatible with many of the major countries of today.

Also, the surrounding area is torn apart by a never-ending war.

It's strong economy is based on a limited resource that much of the world is shifting away from.

Unlike most other gulf states, Abu Dhabi has actually been diversifying it's economy for years. According to Wikipeda, _non oil and gas GDP now constitutes 64% of the UAE’s total GDP_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Dhabi#Economy

its social policies remain incompatible with many of the major countries of today

Perhaps, but it's certainly more liberal than most of it's neighbors. I would have thought an international university could act as a factor to improve that as well.

the surrounding area is torn apart by a never-ending war

It's about 600km from Iraq. That's very roughly the same distance Los Angles is from the Mexican drug wars - where more people are being killed than Iraq at the moment.

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