Global Campuses Can Be a Tool in Public Diplomacy

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen is fellow for the Middle East at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and visiting scholar at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington-Seattle.

January 19, 2015

Evidence from the Middle East suggests a mixed record of benefits and challenges to American higher education arising out of the recent trend in creating branch and satellite campuses. Global universities have assisted in the spread of American higher education values around the world. This projection of "soft power" as a tool of public diplomacy is particularly resonant in a region of the world where the impact of United States policy has, on occasion, been perceived as far from benign.

But there is a very real risk of reinforcing existing inequalities within higher education as the pattern in the Middle East has favored tie-ups with elite institutions.

Moreover, the global campus trend constitutes a significant element of the collaborative networks vital to addressing the complex and interconnected public policy issues that have come to define regional and international affairs in the 21st century. Students and faculty gain also from the greater opportunities for academic and intellectual exchange, both directly and indirectly. Interactive technologies that were unavailable to the first generation of global campuses have turned the virtual classroom concept into a reality.

Set against this is the risk that global universities reinforce existing inequalities within higher education as the pattern of branch campuses in the Middle East overwhelmingly has favored prestige tie-ups with elite institutions. Several lower-ranked colleges have had to close branch campuses after student demand failed to make them economically viable. The failure of almost all the American campuses that opened in Japan in the 1980s to become financially sustainable offers a cautionary tale.

Most of the satellites in the Middle East remain reliant on host country support, especially in the wealthy Persian Gulf states that currently host the highest concentration of branch campuses in the world. Liberal arts schools face particular challenges in settings where freedom of thought and association is restricted. With the reassertion of authoritarian control after the Arab Spring, branch campuses may struggle to balance the surge of interest in the region against local (and funder) sensitivities.