In the arid Middle Eastern desert, an oasis of glass rises shimmering out of the sand. Postmodern buildings are interspersed with carefully irrigated gardens, and children can be seen navigating the pathways between the two. This isn’t a mirage. It’s Education City in Doha, Qatar.
Education City is the newest project of the government of Qatar, one of the smallest and wealthiest countries in the Middle East. The 750-acre compound offers education programs from elementary school to college. Although the Qatar Foundation, the organization responsible for funding Education City, has poured money into primary and secondary education programs, its focus remains University-level schooling. Education City boasts satellite campuses of four American universities, and is courting one more-Georgetown.
Education City presents an interesting opportunity for the University, and also a difficult decision. Participating in the program will allow Georgetown to bring a high-caliber education to students who would not normally have access to it. In exporting Georgetown to the Middle East, however, the University runs the risk of diluting the Georgetown experience.
Does this global dissemination of American university culture represent a new trend in higher education? More importantly, is this something in which Georgetown should participate?
Qatar, a small peninsula extending off Saudi Arabia into the Persian Gulf, is widely known for three things. It is home to the Al Jazeera television network, it houses the U.S. military’s central command center and 70 percent of its income is from oil, making it an incredibly rich country. The Qatari government has decided to use this wealth to finance what could become the next wave of globalization: the creation of the state-of-the-art education. Each university offers a single specialized program; together, they offer the variety of curriculum choices familiar to any American college student.
The Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development was founded by the Qatari government in 1995 with the aim of creating centers to improve education in Qatar and throughout the Middle East, according to the Qatar Foundation website. The foundation’s first project was Education City, composed of an International Baccalaureate-certified school for students between the ages of three and 18, a pre-University program and a learning center for aiding learning-disabled and remedial students.
Seeking to expand Education City to include American universities, the Qatar Foundation approached Virginia Commonwealth University in 1997 with the idea of opening a campus in Doha. VCU agreed, becoming the first of four universities, including Cornell, Carnegie Mellon and Texas A&M, to offer Qatari students a degree.
In 2002, the Qatar Foundation approached Georgetown about participating in Education City. The proposed program would be an extension of the School of Foreign Service, offering a four-year BSFS degree.
According to SFS Dean Robert Gallucci, administrators were initially skeptical about the feasibility of the project, unsure of whether Georgetown’s mission would be effective for Qatar. The administration turned down an invitation to visit the campus in Doha, opting instead to invite a group of officials from the Qatar Foundation to present its case at Georgetown.
“We were impressed with the delegation and how well thought out the program was,” Gallucci said. “They had done their homework.”
After the success of the first visit, with the prospect of a Doha campus seeming less outlandish, three Georgetown administrators boarded a plane for Qatar. There, they met with Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al Missned, the wife of the Emir of Qatar and one of the driving forces behind Education City. The Sheikah explained that she envisioned Education City as a hub of higher education in the Middle East, and that the participation of American universities was absolutely necessary.
Gallucci and other administrators traveled to Qatar and began working with representatives from the Qatar Foundation to elucidate the details of creating a Georgetown campus in Education City. This led Georgetown to develop a term sheet and proceed to negotiating the final agreement.
Although the prospect of a Georgetown in Doha was feasible, however, there were still many questions to be addressed, notably those of security, finances and preservation of Catholic identity. In January of 2004, members of the Board of Directors traveled to Education City to discuss the ramifications of exporting the Georgetown experience.
“We wanted the decision makers of the University to satisfy themselves that the [Qatar Foundation] understood what they were undertaking: who we are, our identity, our standards, our faculty,” Gallucci said. “We can’t exactly reproduce Georgetown but we can do a good job of reproducing the academic and intellectual rigor of the curriculum.”
The group was especially concerned about preserving Georgetown’s Catholic identity in a Muslim country. The University required space for religious services and the ability to have a priest in residence. The Foundation did not object.
Financing the project, another potential stumbling block for the University, became a non-issue, as it was determined that Georgetown would draft a budget for its program and the Qatar Foundation would reimburse the University for all expenses incurred, including a management fee. The project was not only financially sound; it was lucrative.
With these major worries eliminated, University officials began taking the necessary steps to finalize Georgetown’s participation in the program. Initially, the administration hoped to sign the contract and open Georgetown University-Qatar in fall 2005. Although the final agreement has not yet been signed, Georgetown will almost certainly commit to Education City this spring. This puts the University on track for inaugurating the program within a few years.
The successes of the other university programs in Education City are an impetus for Georgetown to get involved. There are already institutions in place that will save Georgetown time and money, including libraries, technology centers and human resources. Additionally, the growth of these other programs can serve as a model for the University as it begins to map out its curriculum and future goals.
One such program is the VCU-Qatar School of the Arts. In fall of 1998, VCU professors began classes just as they begin every school year, with one exception: they weren’t in Richmond anymore. VCU-Q’s first class numbered 36 students. Today, the program counts 161 participants and 39 professors. This fall, some professors will return to Doha for a seventh consecutive year, having originally committed to one or two years.
“People tend to stay,” Dean of VCU-Q Christina Lindholm said.
Since its inception, VCU-Q has worked to widen its scope via brief exchanges with the Richmond campus. This fall, the first group of American students will begin taking classes in Doha, an example, Lindholm said, of the back and forth possibilities for exchange and the benefits that programs like Education City can yield.
“This is an opportunity to help establish American culture in a visual manner,” Lindholm said. “So many emerging countries import Western culture. We teach the principles and allow students to develop their own culture.”
Although the University has resolved many of the issues that could hinder the establishment of a program in Qatar, there remains one pressing concern: security. On March 19 a car bomb exploded outside a theater in Doha, killing one and injuring 12. Although this incident was an anomaly, it shows that Qatar is not immune from the violence that plagues the region.
In order to develop a security plan for the Education City campus, several Georgetown representatives, including Vice President for University Safety David Morrell, traveled to Qatar in March.
According to Morrell, the University must consider two main issues when seeking to secure Georgetown’s facilities in Qatar: the volatility of the region and the potential for incidents within Qatar. To address regional instability, Georgetown is coordinating with the Qatar Foundation and the American Embassy in Doha to register all Georgetown faculty and staff that enter Qatar. If there is an incident, the Embassy will be able to contact these people with information and instructions. Morrell said that to combat local security issues, Georgetown will ensure that the entrances to buildings are monitored and that residences are equipped with safety features and equipment.
Although the idea of establishing a Georgetown campus in Qatar is new, interaction between the University and the Qatari government has been occurring for years. According to Michael Hudson, director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, four or five Georgetown students are currently studying at Qatar University in Doha, and applications are currently being reviewed for the same program next year. Additionally, the government of Qatar funds Georgetown’s Qatar Postdoctoral Fellowship, which is awarded to a recent PhD recipient studying in the field of U.S.-Arab Relations or Islamic Studies. The Fellowship provides $35,000 for the recipient to research, publish a dissertation and teach a course through CCAS.
Hudson said that he hopes CCAS’ good relationship with Qatar and other countries in the region will aid in facilitating a Georgetown presence in Education City.
“We have lots of connections and associations, and we would like to help enhance the communication and interaction between Georgetown, Qatar and the local community,” Hudson said.
Hudson also noted the possibility of establishing a CCAS office in Qatar, in order to help Georgetown graduate students and faculty members.
“We hope our center will have a small presence in the SFS in Education City,” Hudson said. “It could be helpful to make Qatar a base for students and faculty in Arab Studies-a jumping off point.”
Though the enthusiasm of the University community is encouraging, there are potential negative consequences to establishing a Doha campus.
The argument against projects like Education City is essentially the same logic used to counter globalization in general: in creating the global, the local is lost.
“If a university establishes campuses away from the center, it is possible that it can lose focus and identity, but it is not an inevitable result,” Gallucci said.
The franchising of American universities is becoming more and more commonplace. According to Lisa Kirchner, Director of Marketing and Public relations for Carnegie Mellon Qatar, Carnegie Mellon has received proposals from programs similar to Education City located in Japan and Taiwan. As countries begin to adopt initiatives to bring American higher education to their students, it is conceivable that a university could have several campuses spread across the globe.
It is possible that this could detract from university culture. Each campus will cultivate its own character, its own quirks and its own incarnation of the university’s mission and goals. This could lead to a loss of the original purpose of the university, which would undermine the intent of the program.
But Gallucci is optimistic about Georgetown’s ability to retain its sense of community and the Administration’s sensitivity to the way any future projects will effect students and faculty on the main campus.
“For Georgetown, an international university with a School of Foreign Service, it is natural for us to reach out in some way,” he said. “Reaching out internationally is entirely consistent with our mission. We want to enrich the University, not dilute its message.”
