Dubai: A French university in Abu Dhabi will fly in three instructors from France to teach master's degree course in foreign language to a single student.
Three tutors will be sent from France for two weeks each during the academic year, Prof Xavier Galmiche, academic director of the Paris-Sorbonne Abu Dhabi, told the newspaper.
Paris-Sorbonne Abu Dhabi chose to go ahead with the course as they owed it to the person enrolled, The National has reported.
"We wanted to open it for a relatively large number of students. It's expensive when you have only one registered student and we ve had to reflect about what to do in this case," he said.
"To respect our commitment to this one person, we decided to spend this money. We had to do it. You have to be reliable."
The university receives only one student for the master's degree. The student, an expatriate Arab woman, is not always taught on her own, as she takes some classes for courses with other students, the newspaper said.
The university received more than 20 applications, mostly from people in Egypt, because of which the university decided to run the course in the 2008-09 academic year.
Offers were made to 14 applicants but all but one pulled out when it became clear there would be no scholarships and fees would have to be paid up front.
Prof Bernard Franco, a professor of comparative literature responsible for the course, said the university suspected that many of the applicants had applied only to get student visas.
The university had opened the Abu Dhabi campus in October 2006.
