American education thriving ... in Qatar
Five US universities have opened satellite campuses in the Mideast state.
from the February 22, 2007 edition
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While women drive, work, and vote in this traditional Muslim society, most are not allowed to travel abroad by themselves – even to study.
"My brother is 23 and is in Boston studying business management and I was interested in a US education as well. But if I were to have gone to the US, I would have needed a chaperone," says Fatima Mostafawi, a third-year graphic design student at Virginia Commonwealth University's Doha campus. "My mom would have had to come with me to help me. I don't know how to live alone, and it's not accepted."
Al Anood Nasser al-Thani, a young mother and second-year interior design student, says she would have never been able to "do it all" if it had not been for Education City. "The best thing that happened to this country is these universities. I can feel safe and secure about being at home – and get a great education," she says, adjusting her veil and sawing into a wood block as part of a furniture workshop.
"Sure, I want to see other cultures. I want to go to China, for example. But not now. I have everything here. Or just about."
The price tag for building Education City – reported to be more than $1 billion – has been picked up by the Qatari government. And, while none of the colleges would comment directly on finances, officials speaking off the record say professors who come here make salaries anywhere between 25 to 40 percent higher than in the US.
Tuition – which the Qatari government also covers if the student is a Qatari citizen – goes straight to the universities' coffers back home. Moreover, Qatari government donations reportedly as large as $50 million to those institutions further sweeten the deals. But money, insist school officials, is not the only, or real, reason they are here.
"This is the most open-minded, tolerant political system in the region, and a good home for us," says Mr. Reardon- Anderson. "We are starting a fascinating dialogue."
A Jesuit institution, Georgetown demands students take a mandatory theology class as part of the required curriculum. It's taught by a Jesuit priest. The concept, says Reardon- Anderson, has gone over well in Qatar. "We have a lot to learn from one another," he says.
Not everyone is thrilled with such dialogue, or with the imported coed paradigm. "Westernization is the biggest challenge Arab and Islamic societies are facing today," argues Doha-based Islamic scholar Ali al-Quradaghi in reference to Education City. "Globalization is just the latest incarnation of colonialism ... it threatens to undermine the Islamic identity and it poses a threat of cultural invasion to the region."
For the most part, though, the region seems to want its own piece of that cultural invasion. Abu Dhabi has lured both France's INSEAD Business School, and the Sorbonne to its Emirate – while Dubai has scored the Harvard Medical School, which is setting up a postgraduate research center there this year. Stay tuned for the kick off of Ivy league football in the desert next. (Tailgate parties discouraged.)
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