Northwestern may have gone Middle Eastern, but officials at the University of Wisconsin are not as eager to open “brick and mortar” campuses overseas.
This semester, Northwestern University — based in Evanston, Ill. — opened a branch of its Medill School of Journalism and its School of Communications in Qatar. The university became one of more than a half-dozen U.S. colleges to open branches in the region.
But UW officials say they would prefer to team with existing universities around the world rather than build campuses abroad.
“I don’t deny that others like Northwestern may see it as an advantage, but right now it has no influence on our reputation and experience that our students get,” said Patrick Farrell, UW provost.
Farrell said UW would need to get approval of the state Legislature before it could build campuses overseas. Regardless, he said he isn’t certain exporting a UW-style education would work everywhere.
“It is sort of presumptuous to say we know how to run universities really well in other countries,” Farrell said. “We assume because we are big and successful we have a lot to teach and little to learn. But that is probably not true. We do have a lot to teach and a lot to learn.”
Other universities have taken different approaches. In December 2007, Michigan State announced plans to open a school in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. This fall, Northwestern became the sixth school to open a campus in Doha, Qatar. It joins Cornell, Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon, Virginia Commonwealth and Texas A&M universities as part of what the schools refer to as “Education City.”
“We have the same curriculum here, and we have Northwestern people teaching it,” said Richard Roth, senior associate dean for journalism in Qatar.
Roth said the quality of journalism in the Middle East “is way below what we would see anywhere in the U.S.” That’s part of the reason Northwestern is offering students in Qatar all journalism majors it offers in Evanston — newspaper, magazine, television and multimedia tracks.
Roth said Northwestern wanted to be part of the democratization and modernization in the Middle East. He said he sees plenty of opportunities for improvement.
“Our standards are the same,” Roth said. “At Medill, the standard is excellence. Good isn’t good enough.”
