Skip to main content

American Education Abroad

Thanks to the sequence of unplanned events that were set in motion over fifteen years ago, my dream of going to graduate school still remains that - a dream. My friends don't fail to remind me that I could still do it, work on a program part-time, get a degree online and so forth. To me none of that is the real deal. I have always wanted to go back to school full-time, to be a student and nothing else and it is safe to say my time has passed.

Reading this NYT story about American universities setting up campuses abroad, I wondered what it might have been to have access to these in India when I was getting ready to go to college. Families like mine who have believe in keeping their daughters near them until they are married would have loved it. If the cost is significantly lower, it would be a huge blessing for meritorious students who lack the means to travel and live abroad.

While this is like the proverbial mountain moving to the Mahomet, you wonder what it all means in the long run ? Does a Harvard campus in Shanghai or Mumbai equal the "real" Harvard experience in Cambridge, MA ? Maybe it would the second best option after the real deal and hopefully a lot better than getting a degree online. For some reason this reminds me of a book I read some time ago - Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster

In order to maximize profits, many corporations looked for ways to cut corners: they began to use cheaper materials, outsource production to developing nations (while falsely claiming that their goods were made in Western Europe) and replace hand craftsmanship with assembly-line production. Classic goods meant to last for years gave way, increasingly, to trendy items with a short shelf life; cheaper lines (featuring lower-priced items like T-shirts and cosmetic cases) were introduced as well.

“The luxury industry has changed the way people dress,” she writes. “It has realigned our economic class system. It has changed the way we interact with others. It has become part of our social fabric. To achieve this, it has sacrificed its integrity, undermined its products, tarnished its history and hoodwinked its consumers. In order to make luxury ‘accessible,’ tycoons have stripped away all that has made it special.

“Luxury has lost its luster.”

What is true about how luxury lost its luster by way of democratization and cutting corners could easily become true about high quality education. To balance that loss, universities might come up with an uber-premium variation of their brand that is available only stateside and to a very select few.

The shops in Emirates, China, Singapore and India may end up being no better than a cheaper, mass-produced version of the real thing - much like the fashion industry. It would be interesting to see if these universities publish a caveat-emptor for the benefit of those who walk all starry eyed into their local Cornell campus in Asia and expect to come out with an education and recognition at par with their peers in the American campus.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t

Cheese Making

I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques