"Nobody could have anticipated the global meltdown, which has certainly had a negative effect on our student marketing," zegt Brendan Mullan, executive director van de vestiging van Michigan State in Dubai. Het lukt hen en anderen niet meer om voldoende studenten van niveau te werven en dat zet de onderneming zwaar onder druk.
In Qatar zitten onder meer Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, Georgetown, Northwestern, Texas A&M en Virginia Commonwealth met vergelijkbare bedreigingen voor hun voortbestaan. "We've had close to 200 transfer applications, some from other universities in the U.A.E., but others from India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Oman," aldus Mullan. "We are not compromising on quality, even if that means it takes us longer to gain traction here. We actually turned down 30 percent of our applicants last fall."
Michigan State wil er alles aan doen om niet kopje onder te gaan, want men blijft geloven in het Arabische avontuur. "We still believe this is viable and valuable. We're not just going to be a teaching storefront here. We're going to have significant research capacity and our commitment to Dubai is unyielding," zegt hij tegen de NYTimes.