American universities in the Middle East: A student's perspective

Many American universities located in the Middle East try to offer the stamp of higher quality in education that the United States provides and delivers. These institutions are doing an incredible job of providing opportunity for youths of that region to obtain an American education. However, these universities bear the stereotype that they are not applying a genuinely American-style teaching system and methods, but rather an Arabic style with an American name. The research question asks to which extent this stereotype is true. The purpose of the study is to determine if there is/are relationship(s) among the personality types of students enrolled in an American institution in an Arabic country, their background and other factors related to their choice of this institution, and their opinion about the teaching styles applied in this university. Linear regression is used in this study along with Bayesian networks approach to link those different variables and detect possible relationships among these variables. The data used in this paper were derived from an accessible population of 508 students during the Fall of 2011 at a US institution in Jordan. The study reveals that American education is the main reason students chose to join an American university in their Arabic country. It also revealed that such reason is related to gender, personality type, and qualifications among this group of university students. More than 95% of the students think that the standards applied in the local American universities are less than 50% of those applied in the States.