Education experts in Australia are branding Carnegie Mellon University's venture in Adelaide a taxpayer-funded boondoggle.
"While it's too soon to declare victory, we and the South Australia government are satisfied with our progress to date," said CMU spokesman Ken Walters in a statement issued Friday.
But the media outcry against the university's venture in Australia embarrasses one of America's top schools, which has initiated programs around the world to raise money and its international profile.
The Advertiser newspaper in Adelaide reported that CMU's campus there cost Australian taxpayers more than $39.3 million Australian, or roughly $34 million U.S.
The newspaper said the school has enrolled 166 students as of June. That's more than $236,000 a student ($204,000 U.S.) compared to $15,000 a student ($13,000 U.S.) at any of the region's three public universities, the newspaper said.
"You haven't seen the rush of students to South Australian institutions as a result of Carnegie Mellon's presence," said Gavin Moodie, a higher education expert at Griffith University, in The Standard newspaper. "You haven't seen research grants won by them, and you haven't seen any of the claims proven about what they would do for the city."
The program, Moodie concluded, is an "expensive failure."
Walters said it is unfair to compare the 110 students attending its niche program at the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management with the masses attending the region's public universities. And he disputed the costs cited in newspaper accounts.
"This is an election year in Australia, which adds a political dimension to the media coverage," he wrote.
Walters said South Australia had pledged $23 million ($20 million U.S.) over four years for the branch of the Heinz School with the goal of it paying for itself through tuition alone after five years. The government gave another $2.3 million ($2 million U.S.) for a branch of the Entertainment Technology Center.
"In two short years, the Heinz School programs are healthy, with good enrollment and high quality," Walters wrote. "We are on target to reach our enrollment goal of 200 students by 2010."
But even the university's supporters have publicly expressed disappointment with the early results.
The project "has got off to a slower start than I would have hoped for," said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, in an article in The Australian newspaper. He did say, though, that it was an "OK start."
Downer and Mike Metcalfe, an associate professor of management at the University of South Australia, helped pave the way politically for Carnegie Mellon to become Australia's first foreign university.
"Things do seem to be looking a bit unfortunate," Metcalfe said in an article last month in HigherEd, an American online newspaper.
Carnegie Mellon opened a branch of its highly respected Entertainment Technology Center in Adelaide in 2005. The university began offering graduate degrees in information technology and public policy and management in Adelaide in 2006.
Walters admitted that the university was forced to close that center because of low enrollment.
Robert P. Strauss, professor of economics and public policy at the Heinz School, questioned the lack of full-time faculty working at CMU's campus in Australia. As a result, he said, the university has not been able to attract the same kind of students that it has here.
"It's become fashionable for private research universities to open up campuses in other parts of the world for various reasons," he said. "So far, the verdict is still out whether these are on balance beneficial."
