In 2004 Iran’s Islamic Azad University founded a branch campus in Dubai. Anyone with even a passing interest in Iranian higher education is no doubt aware of Islamic Azad’s dramatic expansion since its establishment in 1982. Founded by former president and then speaker of the majlis Hashemi Rafsanjani, the private, not-for-profit institution now enrolls 1.3 million students spread across 360 campuses. It currently lays claim to the title of largest university in the world, and enrolls upwards of 58 percent of Iran’s student population with a goal of winning 64 percent of the market share by 2010.
In many respects, Dubai was an obvious outlet for expansion. The Emirates were the first members of the GCC to privatize their higher education system. All GCC states have increasingly sought privatization as a means of offsetting exploding demand for post-secondary training but this is hardly to suggest that they have shared the same approach. In sharp contrast to the tightly regulated, Western-oriented privatization being exhibited in neighboring Qatar, the opening of the UAE has been market-driven and multipolar. Islamic Azad-Dubai settled into the Dubai Knowledge Village Free Zone, and in so doing, joined higher education providers (both traditional and for-profit) from Australia, Belgium, Ireland and the UK, but also India, Russia and Sri Lanka.
The driving concept is unique yet intuitive: Iran’s largest higher education provider now has access to the 450,000 Iranian citizens of the Emirates, a wealthy group that, before the recession, held between $20 to $200 billion of Dubai’s assets.
As of 2007, the UAE’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research recognized 42 institutions of higher education. On a systemic level, the UAE bears certain important resemblance to the American higher education framework. Both systems lack a real centralized structure, choosing instead to emphasize consumer choice. Institutions must demonstrate flexibility to accommodate diverse and changing student needs in global state system increasingly subject to market forces. As such, both the American and Emirati systems inspire tremendous competition for student enrollment with the result being that there is pervasive vulnerability. Occasional institutional failure is an inherent possibility.
Elsewhere the systems diverge significantly. Most obviously, foreign providers are being introduced to the Emirates to urgently build capacity whereas foreign-based higher education has never been invited to operate autonomously in the US. Even with an invitation, foreign providers would have lacked the space (and thus motivation) to set up shop in an already crowded American system.
The arrival of foreign institutions in the Emirates has often meant finding and filling educational niches that are national in basis. Potential university students have long-determined their educational needs using cost-benefit analysis– by aligning intellectual curiosity and economic incentives with institutional reputation and the availability of quality course offerings. But in the Emirates, as distinct from Qatar, there is an implicit, in fact unabashed, nationally-based appeal to large and diverse expatriate populations.
Islamic Azad is a prime example. With long stagnating support from the public sector, higher education providers in the UAE are emerging in a fiercely competitive local context. Islamic Azad functions with an overall operating budget of $1.2 billion and generally appears to be solvent. Yet there is a risk that the fiercely competitive nature of the local market will result in the delivery of education that persistently compromises on quality. The Islamic Azad-Dubai continues to operate without the approval of any national or regional accreditation agency.
There are additional issues to consider: how do so many competing pedagogies operate in one higher educational structure? What does this contribute to national cohesion in a system that is traditionally characterized by Emirati nationals attending public primary and secondary schools and expatriates opting for private education?
The tertiary education system in the Gulf States is expanding faster than any other region in the world. In many ways it is an experiment without precedent. -SW
