Thuwal, Saudi Arabia — A blank piece of land. Essentially unlimited funds for construction of a new campus. And a $10-billion endowment to pay for research on critical problems facing the world.
That might be a dream for presidents, planners, and fund raisers, but it’s a reality at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or Kaust, as it’s commonly known. After years of reading about the planning and construction of Kaust in the pages of The Chronicle, I had a chance to visit the campus on Thursday with a group of higher-education officials from around the world who are in Saudi Arabia for a conference and recruiting fair.
We’ll have plenty more details on Kaust in a forthcoming story (our Middle East correspondent, Ursula Lindsey, will spend a few days here next week), but I wanted to share my initial impressions as well as give a few specifics from my interview with the institution’s president.
To the eye, the place is impressive. Built in just three years and opened only 20 months ago, the campus is a highly secure complex that rises out of the desert about an hour’s drive from Jeddah. Once inside, it reminds you of a typical planned community—and a brand-new one at that—with streets lined with palm trees. Much like a diplomatic compound, administrators, faculty members, students, and most of the staff both work and live here.
There’s basically everything you need: a supermarket, a bank, restaurants (but no alcohol), a hotel, schools at every level, and various types of living space from apartments to 5,000-square-foot homes (reserved for management and, like all housing, part of the compensation package for now). And the kingdom’s only movie theater.
The academic side of the campus is equally striking. Unfortunately, because of time constraints I didn’t have time to see the inside of the lab spaces (plus, Thursday marks the beginning of the weekend in Saudi Arabia), but many of the first hires here had a chance to build out their own research spaces. Unlike many campuses that feel cramped, Kaust is right now too big for its current number of occupants: 85 faculty members and about 500 graduate students.
The plan is to eventually grow to nearly 3,000 students (graduate students and postdocs) and around 200 faculty members. “I think of Kaust like a Caltech,” said the institution’s first president, Choon Fong Shih, who previously was president of the National University of Singapore.
While it aspires to be a major worldwide research powerhouse, Kaust is more focused than any other elite research university. It has only graduate students. And it concentrates its research in only three areas: energy, water, and food.
Mr. Shih called the three “generational challenges.” And while all three are popular areas of research at other top universities worldwide as well, Mr. Shih maintained that the issues facing the Gulf region are unique to its climate and geography.
Kaust has already poached professors from top institutions worldwide. Still, as it grows, recruiting researchers will remain a big challenge.
Saudi Arabia is one of the most socially conservative countries in the world. Even after a few days here, I’m still not accustomed to seeing segregated lines for men and women at many places (although several women on the trip who have visited Saudi Arabia before commented on how much more open it has become recently). Kaust is the only coeducational university in the country.
“We have negative stereotypes to overcome,” Mr. Shih admitted. “People don’t know this part of the world, and a lot of what they know is shaped by recent events.”
What’s more, Kaust does not offer tenure, which has some worried that the academic freedom expected at any major research university might not be found here. The university’s endowment is courtesy of the king, and the university has plenty of research partnerships with major multinational companies, such as Dow and Boeing.
“Researchers have as much freedom here to research as anywhere,” Mr. Shih said. He said that no research was totally free of controls. For instance, in the United States, he said researchers need to bend to the will of the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
In many ways, he said, researchers here have more freedom because they have five-year research commitments (they are employed under either five-year contracts or five-year rolling contracts). Research support for junior faculty members runs from $3-million to $5-million for five years. For senior faculty, the amount is about twice that.
For some, those promises are just too good to pass up. “Kaust is not for the faint of heart,” Mr. Shih said. “There’s a natural selection. It’s high-risk research for a high return.”
