Dubai: The UAE has been included
among the world’s emerging education centres in a new book. Dr Warren Fox, head of higher
education at Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority, has
contributed to International Education Hubs: Student, Talent
Knowledge-Innovation Models.
“It’s good for the UAE to be included in this list of such countries, especially Dubai, which is known as a hub for branch campuses from around the world,” Dr Fox said.
Dubai has more than 25 branch
campuses, the highest number in the world.
He said Abu Dhabi had campuses of
institutions including New York University and the Paris-Sorbonne University,
but Dubai led the way. It opened its first international university, the
University of Wollongong from Australia, 20 years ago.
Dr Fox said each emirate had its
own policies for education. “Dubai has a more open strategy and the free
zones for international campuses,” he said. “It’s different to the Abu Dhabi
model where there is greater government support given to a smaller number of
campuses.“Dubai has built this system to meet Dubai’s needs with no oil and
no direct subsidy from the Government, and it’s working really well.”
Dr Fox said quality remained a
challenge across the country, where emirates such as Ras Al Khaimah had no regulating
authority for institutions that included branches from the UK’s University of
Bolton and the University of Pune, India.
“Quality assurance of the
international branch campuses and their programmes is a major issue for the
UAE given that they have the largest number of branch campuses in the world,”
he said. “Given that the national Commission on Academic Accreditation is not
responsible for higher education institutions in economic free zones, each
emirate is responsible for developing and managing its own quality assurance
processes for universities in these free zones.”
The Dubai authority has a
university quality assurance board comprising academics from around the world
– the only such system in the UAE.Dr Jason Lane, an education expert
from the US , has researched the rise of the UAE as an education centre.
“The UAE is one of the most important countries when it comes to studying branch campuses, and any volume without it would be woefully incomplete,” Dr Lane said.
“Not only is the UAE the largest
importer of international branch campuses in the world, they have helped
position the UAE as a regional education hub, serving Emiratis, expats and
others from across the region and beyond. “Moreover, the varied approaches to
the creation of these entities, between Dubai, Abu Dhabi and RAK make it an
exciting nation to study.”
Trevor Spedding, a professor at
the University of Wollongong in Dubai, said: “Dubai is now recognised in the
global community as one of the top education destinations, both resulting
from, and stimulating, the growth of the higher education sector.”The book is
edited by Jane Knight, of Toronto University’s Ontario Institute for Studies
in Education.
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