Vice-President of Marketing and Admissions for Emaar Education, Celia Her, told Emirates Business that the new institution would “provide higher education in business studies, information technology, science, art, hospitality and other subjects.”

Reports suggest that recruitment of staff and academics is progressing swiftly and that the new Raffles International University may be opening its doors as early as April 2010.

The new school will increase Emaar Education’s influence in Jaipur, as the company already operates the Raffles International School with over 1,000 pupils. Emaar acquired the Singapore-based Raffles in 2006, which has campuses in India, Singapore, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China and Dubai.

Emaar are also the company behind the $1.5bn Burj Khalifa in Dubai, recognised as the tallest building in the world.

The report, produced by Ernst & Young with the Economist Intelligence Unit, placed Ireland behind Singapore and Hong Kong in a study of 60 countries.

The result was measured “by a country’s openness to trade, movement of capital, exchange of technology and ideas, labour movements, and cultural integration.”

The strength of Ireland’s technology industry has been highlighted in the report, stating:

“In recent years, Ireland has positioned itself as a hub in the global exchange of technology, as a result of its safe operating environment and educated workforce. It may not be the originator of all the innovation that passes through its doors, but the country’s role as a conduit for research and development – through manufacture, packaging and export – has been an important contributor to its high level of globalisation.”

Ernst & Young noted that the economic crisis has slowed Ireland’s growth in globalisation over the last two years but reported that, of the industry executives questioned for the survey, almost half of them expected their international activities to expand over the coming year. Universities and colleges are amongst the organisations seeking to expand their global reach; currently 1 in 12 undergraduates studying in Ireland comes from abroad, with educational groups keen to increase that figure.

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The desired outcome of the overhaul is to increase international student figures and raise the profiles of institutions in the county. The scheme is part of a larger initiative to improve the entire education system in the country.

A report in The Australian stated that the overhaul has included millions of dollars worth of investment into research; and a planned changed from the British three-year undergraduate course model to the four-year US model in 2012. An aggressive recruitment scheme for new faculty has also been high on the agenda for the universities.

“We want to recruit aggressively right away,” says Way Kuo, President of the City University of Hong Kong, one of Hong Kong’s eight public universities. “We’d like to recruit a lot of people from America.” The University of Hong Kong has also hired around 100 professors in the past years, with plans for 100 more. Whilst the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong also have plans to recruit at least 100 new faculty members in the following years.

If you are currently working or considering working at a Hong Kong higher education institution, we would love to hear you thoughts on this topic. E-mail us at: editorial@i-studentadvisor.com