A few years ago, Jamil Salmi put together a neat little book called, The Challenge of Establishing World-Class Universities, in which he noted that there were basically three ways to make a world class university: you can upgrade existing institutions (what most governments do), you can merge them (the French approach), or you can build entirely new institutions from scratch.

That last option sounds ludicrous to most people in western countries.  Who would bypass existing institutions which, over time, have have received billions of public dollars, and start a new one from scratch – wouldn’t that be a waste? But there are countries where this kind of approach conceivably makes sense: countries lacking in strong extant research universities, countries strong enough to ignore complaints from existing universities, and countries with shedloads of resource money with which to pursue this goal.  So far, three countries fit the bill: Saudi Arabia, Kazhakstan, and the Russian Federation.

The Saudis’ King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST) is the furthest along of the three.  Having started life with a $10 billion endowment from King Abdullah, it’s been able to attract some top scholars simply because there’s so much money floating loose here for research (“detailed grant requests?  We don’t need no stinkin’ detailed grant requests!  Have another laboratory!”).  It’s even co-ed – though, since it’s all behind a walled, guarded compound, it’s hard to see any larger social movement being started as a result.

Kazakhstan’s Nazarbayev University seems the longest shot of the three.  The money’s there, but the academic talent isn’t – and frankly, naming your new temple of free thought after a President-for-Life probably doesn’t send the best message to prospective academic staff.  Like KAUST, Nazarbayev has gone out and signed a shedload of academic co-operation agreements with big, “world-class” institutions in order to get a bit of a halo; but hiring’s not going well, let’s put it that way.

The third, Russia’s Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (“Skoltech”), is actually just one part of a new tech hub (Skolkovo), which is meant to recreate Silicon Valley, with Skoltech playing the role of Stanford.  Skoltech, a joint venture between the Skolkovo project and MIT, is actually a bit of a sideshow within the Skolkovo project, and certainly doesn’t have quite as grand a set of ambitions as either KAUST or Nazarbayev.  And though it all seemed to be off to a promising start, there’s now questions about funding, and there are persistent rumours that, as a project of former-President Medvedev, its future under President Putin may not be so bright.

It will be interesting to chart these institutions’ progression over the coming years.  At the moment, you’d likely bet on KAUST being the one to be in the best shape five years from now – already, it is producing some important scientific outputs; but, over the much longer term, Skolkovo, with its heavy tech links, might end up being the most intriguing of three.  Only time will tell.