They came to Mauritius with quite a bit of hope for our students. A joint project between the University of Mauritius and the University of Arizona. What Robert C. Robbins, President of the University of Arizona, and Brent White, Dean, Global Campuses, vice-provost, Global Affairs, University of Arizona, have in mind is setting up a campus in Réduit to teach students from other countries in Africa and Asia relevant courses offered by the University of Arizona. We talked to them about what exactly our students will get out of the experience.

The project you are chaperoning is not the first such venture. Anything new in your project?
Robert C. Robbins (RR): Yes, ours is a revolution. We talk about the fourth industrial revolution at the University of Arizona and the changes are happening quite rapidly. With the convergence of the biological, physical and data sciences, you see this revolution everywhere. We think in terms of how to prepare our students to be competitive in the new economy that’s rapidly changing.

What areas are we targeting?
RR: I think all areas. We are certainly focused on artificial intelligence, machine learning and algorithms but the revolution is everywhere. In business, agriculture, in my field of medicine things are changing so quickly that we can no longer hold on to the old paradigm of educating students.

Concretely, what does this revolution that you are bringing to the University of Mauritius consist of?
RR: We leverage technology to be able to change the curriculum. Students today don’t learn in the same way that we did in school. The so-called ‘sage on the stage’ model of presenting a lecture on PowerPoint is outdated. Today, we opt for collaborative learning; the flip classroom where I would assign reading from a textbook or a YouTube video and people would sit four at a table while the professor covers the topic of the day, whatever that is. Students will have read about the topic and are able to ask questions and engage in discussions within the groups. It’s peer-to-peer learning. The same type of learning goes throughout our global network of universities, which consists of 25 universities.

What does the University of Mauritius get out of this partnership?
RR: Well they get the chance to be part of the network. The University of Arizona is one of the top universities in the world and our degrees are therefore highly prestigious. The student does not have to go 10,000 miles to get that degree. This partnership also gives us a network of launch pads to allow our students to study away from our campus. There will also be very tangible research collaborations. We do research around the world and this new relationship will allow for more purposeful research collaborations because we know each other.

What are your strengths as a university?
We are strong when it comes to the environment with the number one water programme in the world. This is very relevant to Mauritius. Not only is technology and the fourth industrial revolution changing things, but so is climate change. We see the effects of that in Mauritius. We are also very good in optical science which is around autonomous vehicles, censors, medical devices and computer science.

Are there any exchange programmes currently in place?
RR: There are opportunities through the micro-campus structure. The issue is of course finance. We will figure that out. We see the University of Mauritius (UoM) as a strategic location to draw in students from Africa and India. Though the number of students coming to Arizona from Africa has quadrupled in the last few years, not everybody can come to Arizona. Now, they can come here and get a dual degree – a degree from the UoM and one from the University of Arizona, which is a great benefit in my opinion.  

What courses are you starting with?
Brent White: Our first programme is a degree in cyber operations and adding to that, systems and industrial engineering as well as electrical engineering. Agribusiness and resource economics and a number of different programmes are in the pipeline. Eventually, we will have five or six programmes both at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. We are trying to find things that are additive and not duplicating what’s being done at the UoM. For instance, the cyber operations degree will focus on cyber security. We have a leading platform, a whole universe of virtual system for a city. Students go into that and provide cyber security for a simulated system. So that’s a new programme. The programmes add to and augment what’s being offered here.

All this is very well, but what kind of costs are we looking at for this dual degree?
BW: It’s important to put this into context: one year of study, tuition plus living expenses is about $55,000 for a year, so that’s about $220,000 if you study at the University of Arizona for four years. Here, our programme for the University of Arizona portion is $5,500 dollars – one-tenth of the cost of getting the same degree. So the total cost for a student from Africa or India would be about $11,000 per year, half of which would go to the UoM and half to the University of Arizona.

So for Mauritians who don’t have to pay fees to the UoM, how much are they going to pay?
BW: That would be $5,500 per year as the UOM does not charge for their portion of the programme.

How will this work out in practice? Will you be sending lecturers or moderators here?
BW: The model involves a mixture of different modalities for delivering education. As President Robbins mentioned, we are looking at the fourth industrial revolution that changes not only how we live but how we teach too. And so our model for a campus is a ‘flip classroom’ where students don’t come just to be taught; they will read the lecture, do some prep with reading materials at home and then come to the class and engage. That’s the model. That’s how we teach at the University of Arizona. This is an in-person programme where students engage with the professor. In some cases, the UoM professor will also be a global professor for the University of Arizona who will be teaching along with a professor from Arizona who has developed that material. In programmes that are large enough, we will have professors here full time, so it’s a mixture of models that will give students the best by leveraging technology and the connections between co-professors and institutions to allow them to engage with one another and with the material.

We know that the university is not just about the classroom but also about actually going to university, being in another country and facing challenges there. Is there any flexibility in the programme allowing students to minimise costs by starting off the degree here and then having one semester there?
BW: Absolutely. Our model is not to require mobility but to facilitate it. When we say that you require students to come to Arizona to get the degree, many cannot afford to do so, but we allow those that can. We have a programme that allows students to come for one semester where they pay the same tuition as they do here, plus living costs etc. Obviously, this is not cheap but still cost-effective. Students can also come for a couple of weeks for short intensive programmes or spend their last year in Arizona. Whether they stay here or go there, they still graduate from Arizona. They can also come for the graduation ceremony in Arizona, which a lot of other global campus students have done, in our law programme. Lots of students from China availed of that option and we made it a special point to welcome them to the University of Arizona. We want students to identify. So we will also be sending University of Arizona students to the UoM to have an international experience.

When will you start enrolling students?
BW: In the fall of 2020. We are beginning renovation work on the space in this building (the UoM Core building) for the University of Arizona location which will be done by November. We will have a soft launch of the cyber operations programme in the beginning of 2020 but everything will start as from the fall of 2020.

The problem with students in general and at the UoM in particular is that even when they have a degree, there are few employment opportunities because the courses are geared towards academia rather than towards employment. Is that something that has been looked into?
RR: Yes, indeed! What we are aiming to do is to prepare them to get the jobs as things are changing. I heard one of the professors here make the point that half the jobs children in kindergarten will be doing have not been invented yet. One of the things we will have to do is think about how to educate students to be competitive in a high tech environment. The other thing we cannot forget is that what employers really need and what universities are not doing is creating the humanities type graduates by teaching communication skills, critical thinking, leadership, team work, collaboration... All that is imbedded in the curriculum we are offering.  

Who exactly is this programme designed for?
RR: I think this programme is designed for those students in Africa, India and for some of the students here, who value the degree and the opportunities it affords them to get out and get jobs in the global marketplace. I notice that some universities have set up branch campuses here. Now students can pay a fraction of that cost and get a University of Arizona degree.

Are you announcing tough competition?
RR: Of course. We are here to compete. Our programme offers more advantage because we are not building our own campus. We are partnering with the UoM that’s already here, with the great professors and the infrastructure already here.

What kind of skills do you think our students have and what kind do you think they lack?
BW: The students here are fantastic and eager to learn. So we will offer programmes that will allow them to get jobs when they graduate. It’s no coincidence that one of our first programmes is in Cyber City and we not only training students from here in Mauritius but also from the African continent in skills designed for the future of Mauritius and the world.

RR: I would add that I do think that in this global, interconnected world, a student who has lived their whole life on this island has a limited view of the outside world. That’s why it was important for me to come here. Interacting with students and faculty is a different experience. It can be quite daunting, whether you are going to Oxford, Harvard or the University of Arizona. So we are making it easier for the students; we are coming here. Instead of asking them to pick somewhere in the larger world, we are enabling them to explore the world and realise their hopes and dreams. Students want an education but they also want a job. That’s why the vice chancellor is so important to us because he has big ideas and a big vision about that intersection of discovering knowledge and transforming that into a commercialisable product.

Have your partnerships always been with public universities?
BW: A mix of both public and private.

Wouldn’t it have it been better to partner with a private institution here?
BW: Not at all. Here in Mauritius, partnering with a public university is better and the UoM is an ideal partner. We are not here to compete but to partner with the local university, grow, build capacity and bring in new students. The question of whether public or private is not key; what is important is the quality of faculty and whether their vision aligns with ours. The vice chancellor and I have been working together for two years. We have met with faculty heads and in the UoM, we have found a university that’s innovative, forward looking and that we look forward to working together.

Have your other partnerships yielded any graduates yet?
We were in China earlier where we’ve just had our first four-year batch in arts and law at Ocean University. We’ve had some earlier graduates from our campus in Cambodia as well. We were also in India and we are going to Cambodia and Indonesia where we already have the type of campuses that we are looking to set up here, and then we will be going back to China to look for additional sites.

When would the first batch of Mauritian students have a degree from the University of Arizona? 
BW: In the fall of 2025, we will have the big graduation. We look forward to it. We will also have masters’ programmes so the first batch of postgraduate students will be qualifying earlier.

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