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Monday, May 20, 2013

Academic Freedom in the Middle East

The Chronicle for Higher Education recently posted an article about how Arab universities are grappling with accreditation by U.S. agencies, and the related affect this may be having on academic freedom and intellectual content.

Having recently done research in Qatar and experienced the atmosphere in Education City with the numerous U.S. universities, I'm interested in seeing if this has any affect on the current educational offerings of that model or future branch campus development.  Texas A&M is mentioned toward the end of the article, and I found it compelling that a possible decision-making point was whether or not the presence of a branch campus in Doha would align with the values espoused by the university.  Ultimately, TAMU thought it did.

2 comments:

  1. I think we need less accreditation in general, plus this would make for more of an intellectual monoculture. I'd vote to just adopt whatever good practices accreditors require and not let A&M get all this influence over me.

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  2. It might be a different situation overseas, given cultural differences. Will be interesting to see how it affects future development...

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