OK, I many years from now, with money I don't have right now, would like to form a world-class Ivy University. What would be my first problems? Accreditation? Paying staff/professors? Getting Classrooms/size available? Dormitories? Actually I don't even know where I would begin. Provided of course that I get a lot of money together. My plan so far includes going directly into the big moneymakers. Technology Development, Medical Research, etc. as well as the essential Law School, School of Medicine, School of Business... with this money I'm sure we'll be able to fund the Humanities departments, a.k.a Arts and Sciences. Anyone else ever had a similar dream/notion? Would I want to start another Harvard? No, but a Yale would be nice. My time in college so far, has been an amazing learning experience. Outside and inside the classroom, I in a way would like to give something back to the world, a univesity with amazing libraries, the best professors, a place to ask amazing questions and come up with amazing answers, all in the radius of a few blocks, with the sun shining down on graduates dressed in caps and gowns.
hi. i have no idea how i can help u achieve ur dream. but i just wanted to say that u have an amazing dream and i wish u all the luck in acheiving it. i say u should go for it.
Assuming you have a virtually endless supply of money, the biggest problem will be history - as in, your new university won't have any. History adds snob value, for attracting both the best students and the best staff. But good luck.
Your best bet is probably to start an American-style university in a 3rd world country with a lot of untapped brainpower. Someplace like India, the Phillipines, Afghanistan (the major cities are pretty safe), or, if you want to go down the extremely high-risk/extremely high-reward path, Iraq.
I'd agree with everything said so far, but with a slight twist on Alex's idea. The problem with setting up a university in a 3rd world country is that the primary schooling in those countries has been so screwed up for so long that you would have to fix that first. If you had an endless supply of money, I would go for a truly large scale international university. You won't crack into the Ivy league in the states, because they are all about history. They were educating folks before the Revolution (read John Trumbull's "The Progress of Dulness" sometime. It's a riot). The US has the Ivy league, England has Cambridge and Oxford and a few other nations have their "big" school. Set up a school in Switzerland or someplace aimed at bringing together the best of the best from around the world. If you get the right staff together and play everything right, you would have the world's premier university (especially in a couple of generations, when graduates will have moved on to serve in some of their nations' highest offices).
hey wait, start one in kuwait! the goverment is actually looking for people to start private universitys. they are even helping the people financially, they think that that way kuwait will be more "modern". and people here have money, a lot of money which they are willing to pay for education. there is this university in kuwait that just started, called american university of kuwait which is associated with dartmoth university (i hope i spelled that right). and here is there site. AUK this is there first yr and they only wanted 300 students since it was new, but they got nearly 1500 students who wanted to join. i think its great and very promising and i thought u might like to look at it as an example.
well in aplace like kuwait there are a lot of students who for primary schooling have studies in american school. and kuwaities do take there SAT's. im sure there are a lot of countries like kuwait example Bahrain. Qatar and Dubai were u can start.
How about the situation of buying out a down and out American University like that historically black colleges that went puff back in early 2000. I think it would be much easier project since you have all the infrastructure in place and you wouldn't have to worry about start-up growing pains which kill off many a ventures. Plus one would need all the time they can get just to get that US Med School to US standards and up and running. But even with the med school instant prestige maybe hard to come by. Don't forget to buying the $18 million plus NCAA Div-1A status and hiring Bobby Knight as your basketball coach too. On the topic of third world country universities with the exception of Afghanistan all those other countries have their top of top 'brainpower' people in univerisities already they just don't have any jobs to go with it. Maybe lacking in research facilities. Although starting up a 3rd world universities maybe getting more bang for your buck in terms of what you can build. I imagine it being a very hard sell trying to steal away a top researchers in the US or Europe to your unstable 3rd world country were family might be in issue. Triple pay perhaps and the best damn sweet-talker you can find, Face from the A-Team if you can get him.
For a model, try multibazillionaire George Soros and what he has done with Central European University in Budapest, Hungary - www.ceu.hu. Here is the brief history from the web site: A Brief History The concept of an institution of higher learning in Central Europe, one which would bring together students and faculty from a diverse regional and international base in an open and liberal academic setting, was first discussed by a small group of concerned individuals, many of them former dissidents, in Dubrovnik in the former Yugoslavia in April 1989. The setting was the Inter-University Centre, the location for several years of courses in social sciences offered to just such an audience. Funding and support for the participants taking these courses came from George Soros, and it was a natural progression that, as the winds of change began to blow in the region - with varying results - Soros and those who shared his vision would begin to prepare for the new conditions which would emerge. Among those present at the meeting who went on to become associated with what is now Central European University were: George Soros, Peter Hanak, Miklos Vasarhelyi, William Newton-Smith, Istvan Teplan and Endre Bojtar. Beginning with 100 students in its first year in Prague (1991), CEU has grown rapidly. During the 2002/2003 academic year, enrollment stands at 926 students drawn from 46 countries, including those of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, Western Europe, North America, Asia and Africa. Around 100 professors from 25 countries teach at CEU. In addition, prestigious visiting professors give frequent lectures and seminars at the university, thus giving students access to highly respected academics from top-level institutions in Europe and North America. -------- It costs slightly more than 20 million to educate these 926 folks, not counting the original capital outlay for the physical facilities. But this will give you some idea of what kind of money you need - CEU draws 20 million/yr. from the endowment started by Soros and friends. Most university endowments ull 4-5% is all, meaning you need an endowment of $500 million easily to teach less than a thousand students! Good luck!
I think the best bet may be to transform an existing school - a small college may be best. Consider the history of Caltech: http://www.nobel.se/medicine/articles/goodstein/ Hale started out without a lot of money, but used personal connections to build up his university. He convinced a number of well-known scientists to join him, most notably Robert Millikan; after that, it was mostly Millikan's name that drew both funding and world-class professors to Pasadena. The lesson to be learned? If you can convince a professor of similar stature to join your faculty, it may make both generating funding and attracting more top professors much easier. As El Mofles suggests, doing something like this would also avoid a lot of the cost of new infrastructure. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a science/engineering school, if you can find prominent enough faculty in the arts and humanities. As a side note, it may be worthwhile to mention that Throop College was actually Hale's second choice. He was unable to convince the administration of Pepperdine University that they should make it a science and engineering institute. (One can wonder whether the sciences might have been more attractive to the average high school student had Caltech been in Malibu instead of Pasadena...)