Issues in the Development of a Gulf Studies Program at the American University of Kuwait: an Ethnography

Extract

The most frequently asked questions regarding the phenomenon of American universities in the Arabian Gulf are: how good are they and how likely are they to endure? Already one of the first to enter the arena (George Mason University in 2005) was forced to close its Ras al-Khaimah campus in October of 2009 “after reaching an impasse with our partner over budget and control issues” (http://eagle.gmu.edu/newsrooms/740). GMU’s former students were directed to its American campus and seven other institutions within the UAE with whom GMU had teach-out agreements. One of these seven institutions has now closed as well: on 6 July 2010 Michigan State University (MSU) announced it was closing its undergraduate programs in Dubai. Its former students were offered a special package to attend the MSU campus in Lansing. As reported in the Lansing State Journal, the reason given was that the Dubai campus had “failed to attract sufficient numbers of students and was no longer financially sustainable.” It had just eighty-five students. However, MSU still had to pay between $1.3–1.7 million in “wind-down costs” (http://lansingstatejournal.com/article/20100706/NEWS01/307060031/MSU-to-close-programs-at-Dubai-campus).