DUBAI // One of the oldest universities in the UAE is turning its focus to driving up academic standards - particularly in the liberal arts. Dr Lance de Masi, president of the American University in Dubai (AUD) for the past 12 years, said the university, founded in 1995, would seek to increase its student body of about 3,000 to no more than 4,500.
"I expect that figure because we foresee that with the existing facilities, that's the number we can accommodate providing the level of education we seek to provide," Dr de Masi said. "Once you reach a critical mass, the upper limit, your focus can very comfortably turn from growth to increasing quality and selectivity." This mirrors the situation at the American University of Sharjah, founded in 1997, which has no plans to expand its student body of about 5,000, and has instead raised admission standards.
AUD was set up by a decree from the Ruler's Court in Dubai, and among the institution's alumni is Sheikh Maktoum bin Mohammed, the Deputy Ruler of Dubai. He graduated in 2005 with a bachelor's degree in business administration. The university was opened as a branch campus of what is now the American InterContinental University, but has become a stand-alone institution accredited by the US's Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Business, information technology and engineering programmes feature prominently in its curriculum. Dr de Masi, 59, said he expected the liberal arts subjects, such as history and literature, to gain prominence. "At this point in the development of the UAE, there is more of a need for graduates in professional disciplines than in the humanities and social sciences or the natural sciences, so it's only natural that in the universities the most popular programmes are those professional ones," he said.
AUD has recently increased the number of required courses in the arts and sciences, a reflection, according to Dr de Masi, of the "necessary integration" of professional and liberal arts courses. "And I think we'll get to the offering of liberal arts subjects as specialisations within the next couple of years," he said. In the UAE, he said, people are beginning to realise the importance of the general intellectual skills a liberal arts education can give, such as critical reasoning and communication. Often employers are less concerned about specialist knowledge than they are about broader qualities, Dr de Masi said.
"Sometimes students are so terribly surprised when they go for job interviews and they're asked anything and everything except questions relevant to their field," he said. "That's a sign that employers are looking for effective people, not simply people with a degree in a specialised field." He described the planned New York University Abu Dhabi campus as "admirable" but cautioned that, because of the current modest demand for liberal arts degrees in the UAE, the institution would have to be "realistic" about how many students it could recruit.
"It's taken us 14 years of success in offering professional programmes and getting to the critical mass so we believe we can start thinking about the arts and sciences programmes," he said. "They are doing it the other way around. There's a role for them in the educational landscape, but they must be realistic in terms of the size and speed they will get there." dbardsley@thenational.ae