Making the grade

Zubair Hanslot said the Dubai campus would be a hub of expertise.

Bolton. Many British expatriates will be familiar with the west Pennine town, and most would agree that it has little in common with the Emirates. Bolton is cold, wet and slightly quaint. The UAE for the greater part, is not. It is true that both places have regions known as Deira, but that is where similarities between the two conurbations finish.

So it might be a surprise to some that the University of Bolton, established as a mechanics’ institute back in 1824, has recently chosen to open a campus in Ras Al Kamiah.

Zubair Hanslot, academic director, explained: “We decided about April last year that we needed to diversify our student base so take our provision overseas. Although we were operating in many markets like Vietnam and China and Malaysia we didn’t have a fully-fledged campus.

"All the operations were small scale based on one or two courses and one or two staff would fly over and do a delivery in a sort of intense block and then the students got some local support.

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We thought it was OK, but the market demands are slightly different now as we are going global. More and more people are saying why don’t you set up a campus where the whole provision is at the same place?”

“So last year, we decided we wanted a campus. We looked around and we thought there is a lot happening in the UAE, particularly in Dubai. It is the place where we could create a ‘hub’. We looked at Dubai, and at first we wanted to be in Academic City, but when we investigated, we thought that there were a lot of players there already. We thought the competition is quite fierce and that it is not a sustainable market” he said.

With rents fairly high, and many European colleges already based in Dubai, it was time for the University to consider some different options.

“We didn’t throw the towel in,” Hanslot explained. “Instead we looked at the free trade zone here in Ras Al Kamiah. We did a marketing plan and we did negotiations with the free trade zone and found that there is a market.

"Ras Al Kamiah isn’t that big and the rents are charged we could pass on the savings to make student fees quite reasonable.” This is true. With a year’s tuition costing around AED 24,000, it is not cheap, but compares favorably to other Western colleges operating in the region.

Hanslot said: “We’ve set up a number of courses including the MSc in Construction Management, which is a postgraduate course delivered on a part time basis and we are targeting mainly working professionals.

“We are only interested in people who are working in the industry, who have got some academic [ability] with an undergraduate degree and what we are trying to do is give them the skills to be an effective manager in the construction industry. They have got the technical knowledge, which we are building on to give them some business and managerial knowledge to manage the construction industry.”

While students might already be qualified engineers, Hanslot argues that there is always the need for more study. “Training is necessary as there is always development in this industry. Engineering, as you know, never stands still - we are always pushing the envelope” he said.

This is all very well, but who is going to enroll on an expensive course during these difficult times? Hanslot remains upbeat. “A university always does well in a recession. People who are at risk of losing their jobs are always interested in retraining.

"We’ve seen an increase in people enquiring particularly for engineering type of programs because people see that they need to get themselves a good, stable sort of qualification to see through the recession and beyond. We are recession proof in that regard,” he said.

With the initial enrolment figures around a third higher than predicted, Hanslot’s optimism is justified. Perhaps north-west England and the Emirates are not so different after all. 

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