“Carnegie Mellon Plans to Build Campus in Rwanda”
This was a small piece in the New York Times International Education section, but considering our class discussions about the problems of offering quality education in relatively poor countries and the seeming impossibility of engaging in the kind of cost sharing the places more burden on students in a place like Rwanda, this seems like an interesting option.
The article discusses Carnegie Mellon’s plans to open a campus in Rwanda in 2012, which would offer “courses…open to anyone worldwide, not just Rwandan students.” It also mentions that it will offer degrees that are “indistinguishable” from those offered at Carnegie Mellon.
The questions I have: How will the degree in Rwanda be priced? Will it be done in such a way so that Rwandan students can truly afford it? Will Carnegie Mellon students in the USA be subsidizing these efforts with their tuition dollars? Or, in effect, have they already? If so, this takes the idea of cost sharing to new levels of thinking. American students may be asked to cover not only a higher share of their own tuition, but also that of the students of other nations.
One could easily argue that the people of Rwanda are owed something by the world that turned a blind eye to the tragedy there in 1994. For a detailed account of how monstrous the betrayal was, read “We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories From Rwanda” by Philip Gourevitch.
Nonetheless – I can’t help but be curious about where the money is coming from for this venture and who is ultimately paying the price.
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