than those without them (true as an average, but not for individuals, and each would-be student is an individual). The case is forcefully put, with charts, by Mark Gongloff in The Huffington Post.[6] The contrary case is made by two scholars in a paper published by the Brookings Institution,[7] an argument that we will explore in a later chapter.
The debate about the value of a university education is carried on worldwide. In Vietnam, Pham Chi Lan, the former president of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, is a dynamo, with an energy and verve that belies her seventy-plus years. Her keynote address to the hundred or so academics and government officials gathered in a posh Hanoi hotel to discuss the Asian innovation environment contradicted all the stereotypes of an officially Communist state. Vietnam, she said, was taking on the world. The country had what it took to succeed: the prodigious work ethic of the people married with foreign investment, government support, and Vietnamese ingenuity.
She flashed charts and tables about competitive pricing, low labour costs, and urban developments, the like of which few countries outside China have attempted, as well as a regulatory environment that was becoming more capitalist by the month. She spoke about the application of new scientific and technological discoveries to Vietnamese agriculture and fisheries and described the country’s efforts to attract high-technology businesses. She wowed the audience, as much by her confidence and determination as by the clearly promotional tour of Vietnam’s new economy. People were impressed.
During the question period, a visiting scholar asked about something she had not covered in the speech: the role of university research and university graduates in Vietnam’s innovation efforts. It was a standard question, likely to draw a standard answer. The audience knew that national innovation systems draw on the powerful combination of the academy, government, and business to prepare a country for global competitiveness and prosperity. They also knew that the Vietnamese government was investing heavily in research and post-secondary education. A science city under development within a dozen miles of the conference hotel had attracted a $1 billion in investment and would, if finished as planned, host over a million people in a new economic powerhouse. The once-isolationist government had even permitted foreign institutions, led by Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, to set up operations in both Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. The audience relaxed, ready for the latest morale-boosting tribute to the modern university. They were in for a shock.
To the surprise of the audience, Pham stepped aside from the podium—almost as tall as she was—and launched into a savage critique of Vietnam’s universities. She described them as next to useless. Their researchers did little work that had any value to the business community or to the country. The business community clamored for graduates with practical skills, while the universities produced young people with traditional classical educations. As a result, businesses rarely looked to universities to help solve commercial problems. The government was unhappy with the return on their investment. Her diatribe dripped with frustration and criticism of an ossified and unproductive university system. The audience, unused to the spectacle of an Asian leader dissecting a national institution in public, was uncharacteristically quiet. The academics among them all believed as a matter of faith that universities were central to dreams of national prosperity. Was there really something wrong with the country’s universities? Or was it simply that this businesswoman failed to appreciate the many benefits of university training and research to an emerging economy?
Some 3,500 miles west of Hanoi, on the edge of a desert, another nation had a different approach. In the ultra-modern, energy boom-town of Doha, Qatar, two young hijab-clad women offered a portrait of the role of universities and university graduates in their country’s future. Education City, located less than ten miles from Doha’s city centre, demonstrated how fossil-fuel revenues can drive national change. Because the country’s little-known University of Qatar lacked the global prestige and scientific expertise of foreign universities, the country opted to buy skill and status rather than build it slowly from within. The Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, extremely well funded and with strong political connections, sponsored the initiative, seeking to vault Qatar’s university system from virtually nowhere into international prominence.
The multi-billion dollar campus made itself available for a number of programs offered by first-rate international institutions. Virginia Commonwealth University offered a fine arts program. Cornell University delivered a medical program and Texas A&M gave students a chance to study chemical, electronic, mechanical, and petroleum engineering. Business and computer science degrees were available through Carnegie Mellon University, with Northwestern University offering journalism and communication studies, and Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service delivering its prestigious foreign service degree. HEC Paris, one of the top-ranked business schools anywhere, provided executive education programs and another of the world’s great universities, University College of London, delivered graduate degrees in museum and heritage studies. A national university program—the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies—operated on the site. Nearby, in one of the most unusual international initiatives anywhere, the College of the North Atlantic from Newfoundland offered a full range of college and trades programs in a $2 billion campus.
The billions pumped into this university by the Qatari government have bought some pretty impressive facilities. The campus is designed to minimize the effects of the 35+°C (95+°F) temperatures—during the cool season—and to show off the educational opportunities available for Qatar’s elite students. A well-designed student service centre offers everything from a bowling alley to high-end gyms and swimming pools (separate ones for women and men). No harsh words here for the unique Education City experiment, which government officials and business leaders praise endlessly and finance at a remarkable level, with high standards but the constraints that are common in a Middle Eastern nation.
The two students assigned to take a small group of visitors around Education City lauded the facilities. The participating universities, they said proudly, were among the best in the world. They explained how each international participant tried to replicate the culture and ambiance of its home institution by ensuring that top-quality faculty taught the classes, and that the educational standards were the same as at home. Both students had started in Cornell’s pre-medicine program, but found the courses not to their liking. They opted instead for Texas A&M’s engineering degree. Bright, engaging, and well informed, the students fit in comfortably with the unusual mixture of Qatari nationals, home campus visitors, and foreign students studying at Education City.
Their take on Education City could not have been more different from the Vietnamese business leader’s condemnation of her country’s university system. The satellite campuses brought prestige and opportunity to Qatar. Neither one of them, they said, would have been permitted by their parents to study outside the country. Yet the national university lacked the stature and credibility their parents sought for them. The satellites offer them the benefits of a foreign education without having to leave home. As was the norm for Qataris, neither student wanted for much—both were chauffeured to and from the campus each day—and neither one would have been out of place in a top-flight university located elsewhere in the world. Obviously smart, they knew that they were preparing for one of the most lucrative employment markets in the world. They chuckled when asked if they worried about finding work after graduation. Both had high-paying jobs lined up, even though they were still in their third year.
Vietnam and Qatar represent polar opposites of the current university reality: on one hand, damning criticism of a system that is poorly connected to the national business community and underperforming from an economic perspective, and on the other, praise for institutions that promise to produce the leaders and commercial discoveries of tomorrow.
World Hunger for the Dream
Like a storm gathering its strength from the ocean’s energy, the tempest bearing down on the universities takes its energy from young people’s yearnings for a good and prosperous life. It is as regular and predictable as the tides. Every year, all over the world, seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds perform
