Founder of UAE university leadership council fears for its future

The committee of universities was set up more than three years ago to attain more funding for research and to encourage greater collaboration but it has achieved very little.

ABU DHABI // One of the founders of the UAE’s University Leadership Council set up more than three years ago fears for its future, saying the group may have become “a single-issue candidate”.

“There is still an issue with collaborative habits with universities here,” said Prof Tod Laursen, president of Khalifa University. “We’ll still continue to push for it but the surprising thing to me is that usually you don’t have to ask people twice to participate. It’s usually clear that it’s in their best interest.”

Khalifa University is one of five founding institutions, with the American University of Sharjah, Zayed University, UAE University and the Masdar Institute.

Set up to bring greater collaboration and campaign for more research funding, the council nearly disintegrated last year.

Major leadership changes at some of the universities, including new provosts at UAEU and Zayed University, and the sudden illness of AUS chancellor Dr Peter Heath, have meant a high turnover of staff at the council.

And attempts to open up the group to the country’s dozens of other universities seem to have fallen flat. Open invitations to working sessions have had such little take-up that they were cancelled.

Prof Laursen, formerly of Duke University in North Carolina, was part of a group in the US that began small and developed into a working group of several institutions.

But he said he feared the agenda of the council was too limited.

“Pushing the government on a monthly basis for research funding was a bit too much,” Prof Laursen said. “It needed a broadening of scope.

“I think there are lots of things a group like this can advocate for other than increasing research funding. We ran the risk at times of being a single-issue candidate.”

Several universities reportedly felt excluded in the council’s early days, which may have harmed future collaboration and growth.

Institutions such as the British University in Dubai and the University of Sharjah have significant research activity and New York University Abu Dhabi, which opened about the time of the council’s formation, had always planned to be a research institution.

“It was formed initially, rightly or wrongly, of the five universities with a clear research agenda,” Prof Laursen said.

“The question came along at some point, ‘Why not us?’, so we tried three times last spring to throw events open to everyone who wanted to come, and invited presidents and provosts from all over the country.”

Prof Samy Mahmoud, chancellor of the University of Sharjah, which took part in meetings when the group was established, agreed momentum has been lost.

“The University Leadership Council had good objectives but did not succeed in mapping out a strategy to achieve them,” Prof Mahmoud said. “It did not have the resources required to sustain its drive.”

He said that while the group had potential, it needed government support.

“I believe it is a good mechanism to promote collaboration among universities in the UAE that are research-intensive and to act as an advisory body for the national government on the development of policies to support applied research in leading universities,” Prof Mahmoud said. “To succeed as an effective forum it needs support and recognition by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.”

Prof Reyadh Almehaideb, deputy vice chancellor of research and graduate studies at UAE University, is the institution’s representative for the council.

But since his appointment about three months ago, the group has not met. Prof Almehaideb said its founders’ expectations were perhaps not relevant to the local environment.

“In the UAE, it’s a different atmosphere to the US,” Prof Almehaideb said. “In the US you need to propagate and advocate your ideas.

“Here we have more of a consultative process, with the decision makers more a part of that. The work of the ULC is done more directly between institutions and the leadership.”

He said the council was useful as a body for leadership to consult, although lines of communication in the UAE were mainly more open between leadership, industry and individual universities.

It would take time, Prof Almehaideb said, for the ULC to reach the kind of status of such councils in the US.

“The culture of collaboration between universities is also very young and the maturity of institutions isn’t there still,” he said.

Prof Almehaideb said individual institutions could do the job for themselves.

“We can meet when we really have some fruitful possibilities, such as research collaboration, which will be a worthwhile discussion,” he said. “But it must be worthwhile.”