Ground was broken this spring on the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. With a roughly $10 billion endowment, KAUST will be among the richest universities in the world. Pointing to earlier failed—but less well-funded—ventures, skeptics say the country would be better served by improving its existing educational system.
KAUST was the brainchild of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud; on top of providing the endowment, he is spending more than $3 billion on the KAUST campus and a university town on the Red Sea, about 170 kilometers northwest of Mecca. “It has been our leader's dream for many, many years to represent Saudi Arabia as a major contributor in technology and research, and also to drive the kingdom's economy to be more of a knowledge economy,” says Nadhmi Al-Nasr, the interim president of KAUST.
With interdisciplinary institutions rather than traditional departments, KAUST will start off...
