We just heard that another set of friends from AUC are moving on up.
They are relocating to Dubai.
Another couple has moved to Oslo.
Another couple has moved to Portland (OR).
Another friend relocated to the SF Bay area.
This is all since we left in August.
Of our “cohort” (which is the group of people that went through orientation with us) we can’t think of anyone that is still there.
Now I am sure that there is an influx of people coming in, and we do still have a few friends there. But from this end, it looks like AUC is emptying out.
There was also a recent article about a 30% drop in study abroad students this year.
All of these are bad signs.
Now it is possible that people coming in now may have higher retention. Mainly because they don’t know any better. I mean, we moved there when the campus was still downtown. There were lots of reasons to dislike or even despise the downtown campus. But at least it wasn’t in the middle of the desert.
People that came in when we did (or before) were (at least partially) drawn there to live _in_ Cairo. Many of them were unhappy with the move to new campus.
Some of our friends have made choices to stay for various reasons:
- Close to retirement
- Their field of study requires them to be in Cairo or the Middle East
- Financial: one can live very comfortably in Cairo on a academic’s salary. Much more comfortably than most places in the US. Certainly more comfortable than any large city in the US
But it seems that people with options are leaving.
This AUC Diaspora is good in one way for us (and it _is_ all about us):
We now have friends scattering to the four corners of the globe. Which means lots of free lodging!