An ambitious plan of the University of Pune (UoP) to set up an offshore campus in Dubai has come a cropper. The Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), Dubai’s apex licensing and regulatory authority for education, has rejected the varsity’s detailed proposal. According to an explanation proferred to the media by the KHDA, UoP’s bouquet of study programmes don’t offer novelty, nor are they in alignment with the thrust areas highlighted in the Dubai Strategic Plan (DSP)-2015.
DSP-2015, which was unveiled on February 3, 2007 by the UAE prime minister, vice president and Ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, roadmaps a strategic plan to develop the emirate’s most dynamic economic sectors. The plan’s objective is to sustain real economic growth at 11 percent per annum, to expand GDP to $108 billion (Rs.540,000 crore) by 2015, and to increase real per capita GDP to $44,000 (Rs.22 lakh) per year. The education sector is a key focus area of DSP-2015.
The rejection of UoP’s proposal, forwarded for KHDA’s approval in early 2008, has come as a blow to the university’s administration which had worked on it for over a year. The objective was to set up the campus in partnership with the Dubai-based Edulink Services, an academic infrastructure provider. The plea before the KHDA was for an academic licence to enable UoP to offer its programmes and a commercial licence for Edulink Services to deliver the programmes in Dubai.
According to KHDA’s chief of licensing and customer relations, Mohammad Darwish, Dubai needs higher education institutions which focus on the needs of learners and address the requirements of the workforce in the Emirates. “But the UoP courses are a duplication of those already in existence,” says Darwish.
UoP’s bouquet offered to introduce 14 degree programmes in subjects such as business management, engineering, foreign trade, computer applications, business administration and science at the proposed Dubai campus. Asked to comment on the rejection of UoP’s proposal, vice-chancellor Dr. Narendra Jadhav says: “I don’t want to speak about the issue right now. However, the UoP will definitely establish a good academic relationship with the Emirates in the coming years.”
Undoubtedly the rejection of its proposal to establish an offshore campus in Dubai has come as a shock to the UoP top brass. Because currently nine Indian universities have established branch campuses in this tiny sheikhdom (pop. 1.4 million). Yet it’s perhaps the sheer size of UoP which scared KHDA. Perhaps the largest university in India, UoP has 520 colleges and 300 recognised institutes spread across Pune, Ahmednagar and Nashik districts affiliated with it. Together, these institutions have an aggregate student population of 650,000, including 14,000 foreign students mainly from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Africa.
However nothing loath, UoP and its go-getting vice-chancellor have operationalised Plan B: opting for Ras Al Khaimah (RAK), another one of the seven emirates of the UAE, as the “new starting point” for the university’s offshore campus initiative. “As per the revised plan, we will start offering short-term courses such as executive MBA and IT-enabled services at RAK from this month (April). A full time campus will become operational this September,” says Jadhav, quite obviously an educationist disinclined to let the grass grow underfoot.
Huned Contractor (Pune)