Comments on: NU plans to open j-school in Qatar (update 2)

By: Dagny Salas

Dagny Salas — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 20:06:47 +0000

Interesting move, Medill. I tend to agree with Spencer on this: Maybe the curriculum should actually be in good shape before they teach it to students in Qatar. Also interesting that they’re not planning to do IMC stuff there initially; maybe the money we get from this means the school won’t have to pull this “OMG! IMC!” business on us for financial reasons as a recent Daily guest column claimed Medill does.

By: Christian

Christian — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 19:36:06 +0000

I think it’s a spectacular idea. Medill is so outdated and backwards in many respects, focused way too much on the old school print apparatus. It’s very common for american universities to have small satellite schools in foreign countries — these programs can offer great study abroad opportunities without having to deal with credit transfers. Also, the arab television media market is actually GROWING, Al-Jazeera just launched an all-english network and hired a bunch of cream-of-the-crop western journalists.

By: Spencer Kornhaber

Spencer Kornhaber — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 17:04:35 +0000

Qatar better be paying NU a lot — more than the cost to build the new school, so that students at the Evanston campus see some benefit from this. It’d be cool if Al Jazeera and other outlets in the region became TM sites, but it’s not going to be cool if they to fly some of Medill’s best professors to teach there. I agree with Nomaan that this is an inappropriate time for NU to be doing this: Medill’s curriculum at the moment isn’t worthy of being exported anywhere.

By: Tom Giratikanon

Tom Giratikanon — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 17:01:47 +0000

I definitely had the same thought.

By: Nomaan

Nomaan — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 16:44:20 +0000

So that’s what Medill’s been doing all this time when administrators said the reports on next year’s curriculum was delayed. It sure feels great telling my parents how much they have to pay for this…