NYU-Poly President Jerry Hultin speaks at OG’13

NYU – Poly (Polytechnic Institute of New York University), President Jerry Hultin says there are four pre-requisites of a world-class university.

“The university must be global; it must provide skills that lead to creativity and critical thinking; it must be layered in that it provides a variety of programs not necessarily geared towards a career in academics and it must be cost-effective.”

At a panel discussion on ‘Creating World Class Universities’ at the Salwan Media One Globe 2013: Uniting Knowledge Communities conference held on February 7 and 8 in New Delhi, Hultin applied these four principles to NYU - Poly.

“Being situated in a global city that’s home to 140 languages makes it easy for a university to be global by just being in New York,” he says. “But in being a large, private university, we decided we’d be global in the literal sense of being around the world.”

NYU – Poly is currently building campuses in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai and has 14 ‘study-away’ sites around the world.

“Most universities say you need to come back to the mother ship, but we say equal around the world – so no matter which site you study from, what you get is the NYU degree,” Hultin says.

The second requisite which Hultin considers important, and NYU – Poly fulfils, he says, is its ability to provide young people with skills that enable them to be creative and entrepreneurial ‘to be able to take the knowledge they learn at university and step out, over the edge, into creating a new world.’

Closely related to the second, Hultin says, is the third requirement – that of a layered offering. “The layered view we have at NYU is, of course we will have the usual set of academic programs, but in addition we may also create a two year associate’s degree which will equip young people with skills that make them technically proficient.”

He explains the real world doesn’t demand only university professors with college degrees; it needs corporate executives, managers, technicians: ‘people to do the real pieces of life.’

Also important is the provision of an affordable, high quality education. “In the US a good college education costs about USD 30,000, which is very expensive. We have to learn to educate effectively and creatively and use technology that reduces the cost enormously,” Hultin says.

Former Associate Dean of the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Robin J. Lewis agrees with Hultin’s central mantra that a world-class university has to be global.

Lewis who also took part in the OG 2013 panel discussion on Creating World Class Universities says, “to be global, you have to build an education that has certain key characteristics: a global faculty and student body; concerted targeted investment and strong visionary leadership.”

A fourth unsaid requirement he says would be “to combine the three characteristics to create students who bring with them, into the working world, global competency” - a quality very hard to define but nevertheless essential to strive towards.

Robin J. Lewis speaks at OG’13

Lewis currently holds two senior academic positions in China and Russia; as Professor and Director of a new Master of Global Public Policy program at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow, and as Professor and Director of the Global Partnership Network at the School of Social Development and Public Policy at Beijing Normal University, China’s top graduate program in public policy.

He says both countries present particular sets of challenges: China in terms of a systemic weakness in the ‘lack of critical thinking, creativity and innovation’ and Russia in terms of not having recognised until 2011 any university degree awarded outside the country.

He says educational institutions in both countries have a long way to go in attaining global standards, but the fact that both have started opening up to the world and are ready to invite foreign involvement and partnerships is a step in the right direction.


Rajyasri Rao has worked as a journalist with the BBC and the UNICEF in India and as a communications consultant for Ericsson in Sweden. She holds an M.Phil. in Sociology, from the Delhi School of Economics.