Education

The sun is rising over Abu Dhabi, and we're just about to begin the breakfast briefing for the day. Last night at dinner, our group met with the minister of education, in fact, I sat next to his excellency, and was called on first to ask questions following his presentation. (It turns out the UAE has too many women going into education and not enough men! They've remedied the situation with incentives to encourage male teachers. I asked how the U.S. might use such a system.)

The UAE is also in the process of developing human capitol alongside fantastic land development projects. Of the country's 4 million residents, only 13 percent, or about 800,000 are actually Emirate citizens. This would be like the entire population of South Dakota ruling an oil-rich area the size of Utah populated entirely with Canadians (read non-nationals). It's pretty crazy.

The state is committing lots of resources to improving the education system, and while many of the Emirate students on this exchange received their education in the States, this might be changing. NYU is opening a University in the UAE, and the state is actively seeking to apply some of its astounding technology to improved educational outcomes at all levels. However, whether non-nationals will receive the same types of state-funded educational opportunities is not clear, and this is important since the vast majority of Emirate residents are not citizens.

On another note, I didn't realize the competition for world's largest mall was so acute. If I run into any developers working on that project, I'll warn them about Syracuse's competing DestiNY USA, soon to be the TRUE world's largest mall!