Gulf special: Educational foundations

George Ebbs says he was enjoying retirement after seven years as president of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, when he was approached at the end of last year to become the first president of DAE University. It is something he describes as "an unparalleled opportunity to create the world's finest aerospace and aviation educational institution".

Although he says that ambition will be achieved "two presidents from me", the university will open for business in a few weeks, with around 20 students beginning a one-year masters in aviation management. The programme is being delivered and offered as a joint degree by Cranfield University in the UK, and will be taught at a local technical college.

The 20-year Cranfield partnership ensures the university can be up and running immediately, but the plan is to quickly recruit in-house teaching staff, ramp up student numbers and open a dedicated campus, almost certainly as part of the new Jebel Ali airport development.

By 2015, DAE University hopes to have 8,000 students studying for everything from master mechanic certificates up to PhDs. Although that is around 2,000 more than his previous employer, Ebbs says that target is "not daunting".

Creating an educational establishment from scratch is simpler in its way than managing an established one, he says. "You are free from a lot of the difficulties that you have if you have an institution that's been around for 20, 30 or 100 years."

One way DAE University will be different, says Ebbs, will be in its "market-driven" approach. "We will need to know what the employers of our graduates need. We have to have 'with-it' staff. This will not be a research university with ivory towers. This is a commercial organisation that is going to create job-ready students," he says.

Ebbs and his team will look at "non-traditional teaching methods, focusing on the outputs". He likens it to the way the military trains. "There you have people who are able to fly multi-million dollar machines in their early 20s."

The university will not offer advanced type training. "We're not going to operate simulators," says Ebbs. However, it will offer to take students "from ab initio to the right seat" in 18 months and, after that, consider providing type training in partnership with local providers, such as CAE.

There will certainly not be any let up in demand for pilots in the region, he says. "You have to ask where India is going to get 2,000 new pilots from."

Source: Flight International