When Dubai opened the world’s most opulent hotel nearly two years ago, developers behind the $1.5-billion project threw what was billed as the most expensive private party ever. Members of the emirate’s royal family mingled with A-list Hollywood celebrities to watch the largest-ever fireworks display, signaling to a world reeling from the collapse of Lehman Brothers that in this small corner of the world, anything was still possible.
Then the unraveling of Dubai’s real estate market last year changed that image. Stories abounded of jobless expatriates abandoning luxury cars at the airport parking lot because they could no longer repay loans.
All sectors were hit.
When Michigan State University shut down its undergraduate program in July — citing, among other things, the departure of overseas workers and their families, who make up more than 80 percent of the population — it was feared that other colleges and universities, too, would suffer.
This has not happened, according to Warren Fox, executive director of Higher Education at Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority, an agency in charge of education development programs. He said that enrollments at higher education institutions were “holding,” while a few had even managed to increase admissions.
According to the agency, the number of students attending colleges and universities increased from about 36,000 in 2008 to 38,200 the following year.
Commenting on the trend this year, Mr. Fox said “anecdotal comments from some campuses show enrollment holding, and increasing in some,” including the Dubai programs of Middlesex University and Heriot-Watt University of Britain and Murdoch University of Australia.
Growth has been especially strong in the emirate’s so-called free zones, which target overseas education providers by offering complete foreign ownership, tax-free status, 100 percent repatriation of profits and visa and other assistance for faculty and students.
“Free zones have had very rapid growth over the last 10 years,” Mr. Fox said. “We expect this to continue.”
He added that there were just four campuses in the free zones in 2004, but that there are now 32.
Elsewhere in the region, expansion has not been without failures. A year before Michigan State ended almost all of its programs, another prominent American institution — George Mason University of Virginia — closed its doors in another part of the United Arab Emirates, Ras al-Khaimah.
Mr. Fox acknowledged that there could be more. “You can find some institutions that aren’t doing very well.”
Foreign education providers that plan to grow gradually are more likely to succeed in this market, he noted.
“They do need to get a footing, they need to start in a few areas where the university has strength,” he said. “It takes a while for word to get out to students. It’s in about the fourth, fifth year where we see student numbers really increase.”
Then there are other challenges for growth in the area. Academic levels in the U.A.E.’s high schools are “insufficient,” especially in English and mathematics, according to Mr. Fox, who was previously executive director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission. “Most of the Emiratis getting out of schools here need a year of foundation” courses before they can apply to college. “There is not the readiness that you would find in other countries,” he said, although he noted that the Dubai government was working on revamping its entire school system.
The lack of financial aid is another stumbling block. Banks hesitate to give loans because student visas are generally limited to three years, Mr. Fox said.
“That’s why price becomes important to students,” he said, adding that this had played a role in the lack of enrollment at Michigan State. “You have to be cognizant of price because students don’t have access to funds.”
Whether or not these factors have limited the pool of eligible students in Dubai, recruiters there have for years targeted nearby overseas markets. Also, universities from some of these countries, including India, Pakistan and Iran, have opened branch campuses in Dubai and have even brought along large numbers of students.
In addition, the marketing of Dubai’s colleges and universities is “getting far more sophisticated,” Mr. Fox said. In the last year or so, local institutions have expanded their ways of communicating with potential and current students.
“They, like everybody else, are using social networking media to reach out to students,” he said.
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