Int’l expansion should focus on people

Duke’s global expansion has always managed to unsettle while it inspires. A more global reach promises diversity and the extension of the University’s educational mission. But countervailing anxieties attend international expansion—especially as efforts abroad become paradigmatically corporate.

This gives us more reason to take heart in Duke School of Law’s recent announcement of the Global Leader Scholarship, a new program that provides full tuition for one Chinese law student. The decidedly personal bent of the program stands in marked contrast to the increasingly pecuniary logic of internationalization at Duke. This is a good thing—Duke’s greatest resource will always be its people, and internationalization ought put their education at front and center.

The Global Leader Scholarship’s ability to attract outstanding candidates stands to benefit more than the recipient. Winners will bring unique experiences and diversity to stateside Duke. The scholarship can protect this value by limiting awards to only a few recipients—this will help generate the prestige needed to attract the best students.

The most persuasive argument for the Duke brand will always be its people, and the Global Leader Scholarship stands to attach the Duke name to outstanding alumni. The program’s forerunner—the Richard M. Nixon Scholarship—provides a notable example: Gao Xiqing, Law ’86, who serves as the vice chairman, president and chief investment officer of the China Investment Corporation and sits on the University Board of Trustees. Eminent alumni like Gao lend Duke a magnetism not reproducible with other forms of brand building.

Finally, we should not downplay the financial upside of the scholarship program. Scholarship programs cost little to commit to; if the program fails to do what it sets out to do, it can be cut without a fuss.

We wish that the program’s commitment to people and education would radiate across Duke’s experiments in internationalization. It stands in marked contrast, for instance, to much of the logic behind Duke Kunshan University, which has increasingly focused on student enrollment and tuition dollars, even as the campus’ academic strategy remains vaguely sketched. That DKU will likely open its doors by offering the Masters in Management Studies degree—a program we have long criticized for unduly prioritizing revenues—underlines this focus. Financial reasons ought to have major force in discussions of international expansion, but academic excellence should always have priority.

Corporatization is not a Duke invention. Opportunistic educators, like the superstar professors who founded the now infamous, for-profit New College of the Humanities in London, are increasingly ­looking to cash in on prestige.

We do not maintain that scholarship programs should trump brick-and-mortar international expansions; large-scale expansion can accomplish things that smaller programs cannot. But we cannot let more deeply held values get lost in the shuffle. Even while we expand into China, Duke’s undergraduate admissions has not extended its need-blind policies to international undergraduate applicants. We cannot know how many Gao Xiqings have passed on attending Duke for this reason, but we wonder whether a China campus will make up for their loss.