You have to give credit to Sheik Mohammed for what he has accomplished. Dubai is not like other arab countries which get money from petrol. It built itself into a city which everyone in the world knows, that too in a very short span of time.
Remember the fallacy of the unseen. It's easy to marvel at what has been built (albeit at a net loss) and forget the alternate uses of those resources.
That said, Abu Dhabi is actually trying to do just that. They're buying off entire departments of western universities, offering generous research grants if the department is relocated to Abu Dhabi. The idea is to bootstrap a tradition of higher education.