Universities rethinking global expansion - Mary Carmichael, Boston Globe

Over the last decade, universities spurred by dreams of global cachet - and, sometimes, by foreign governments eager to underwrite them - built or rented whole campuses and offered Western-style education abroad. But now some schools are running out of cash as they struggle to attract enough students and develop a viable business model. “In the last 10 years, there was a gold-rush mentality,’’ said Jason Lane, who studies the phenomenon at the State University of New York at Albany. “Everyone was trying to start an international branch. But now the excitement is stalling.’’ The most spectacular collapse of an international branch campus happened last year, when Michigan State University, failing to recruit even one-fourth as many students as planned, pulled out of Dubai after just two years in business. George Mason University left the United Arab Emirates two years ago, before its inaugural class could graduate. Troy University has closed three branches in the past year, in Guam, Sri Lanka, and Germany. Texas Tech University plans to shutter its own German outpost by 2012.