Borat, Giant Cricket Fights, and Ho Chi Minh

All featured in my latest Chronicle of Higher Education column, which looks at Ben Wildavsky’s recently-published book about international higher education, The Great Brain Race.

Meanwhile, Wildavsky notes today that Yale University has announced a new, non-binding agreement with the National University of Singapore (NUS) to consider:

…joining with NUS as a full partner to establish “Yale-NUS College” in Singapore, with an intended opening in the fall of 2013. The College would be a highly selective, small, autonomous school within NUS, with approximately 1,000 undergraduate students in its early years. The College would award its degrees through NUS, not Yale. The College’s separate governing board, half of which would be composed of Yale appointees, would have authority over curriculum, faculty appointments and admissions policies. The cost of establishing and operating the College would be borne by NUS and the government of Singapore, at no financial cost to Yale.

Similarly, Wildavsky devotes a chapter of his book to the controversial, much-publicized move to create NYU Abu Dhabi. I assume this kind of arrangement is a sign of things to come. The global demand for high-value college degrees is surging and elite American university brands are incredibly valuable, putting them in position to forge partnerships on generous terms.

But it also makes me wonder why elite institutions have no interest in establishing branded partner campuses in the United States of America. Wealthy, highly-selective schools aren’t proportionately distributed among the 21st century American population, most having been founded either in the colonial era or through the dispensation of 19th century industrial fortunes.  We’re not building any more of them. So why not a Yale-San Antonio? Stanford-Orlando? Columbia-Phoenix? It seems to me that a growing metropolitan area with millions of residents would welcome a new prestigious private university and provide all manner of subsidies and tax breaks to get one.