Institutions weigh the risks of creating Persian Gulf campuses against the attractive returns
An Ivy League medical school is being built, complete with wireless networking and a high-speed Internet link to New York City. The campus is taking shape not in one of the Northeast’s medical hubs, but on a barren patch of desert near the Persian Gulf, in the emirate of Qatar.
Cornell University’s branch medical-school campus isn’t the only American college presence in Qatar. Nearby, local women who will soon graduate from Virginia Commonwealth University’s program in fashion and interior design applaud as models show off the dresses created by the students. The garments are a colorful departure from the black head coverings and robes that the young designers usually wear.
Oil-rich Qatar abounds in such contrasts, and its ambitious “education city” outside the capital, Doha, is no exception. The Arab country, which is roughly the size of Connecticut, is sparing little expense in its effort to import the best of American higher education to the 350-acre site.
Armed with the latest U.S. News & World Report college rankings and a hefty bankroll, the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development is carrying on long-distance courtships with some of America’s elite universities and professional programs. In the process, it has courted its share of controversy. The foundation was created in 1995 by the nation’s leader, Sheik Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, to improve education, in large part by recruiting American universities to participate. While supporters in the United States see an opportunity to break down cultural barriers, critics say American institutions are being seduced by a wealthy suitor who can house them in high style on foreign shores -- but won’t necessarily do much for their programs or their reputations. The foundation offers to pay all of a college’s expenses -- including the cost of a posh new campus -- if it will send faculty members and offer degrees in Qatar.
Some have questioned whether female and Jewish faculty members would feel welcome in the Islamic nation. None of the 10 faculty members hired to teach in Cornell’s premedical program next year are women, and administrators aren’t aware that any are Jewish. At Virginia Commonwealth, 15 of the 24 faculty members are women, and all but 3 of the 24 are Americans. Although women can vote and drive in Qatar, their activities are inhibited by social and family restrictions. For instance, social customs dictate that local women wear black cloaks and head coverings in public, and most social gatherings are segregated by sex. And although Qatar is considered moderate by Persian Gulf standards, and appears to be moving toward a democratic system of government, it still has an autocratic regime.
And while Qatari officials insist they would not discriminate against Jewish professors, a recent posting on a government-sponsored Web site might give some professors a cause for alarm. After September 11, a site registered to Qatar’s Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs accused Jews of plotting and executing the terrorist attacks and of controlling the American news media and the FBI. The site also referred to the “alleged mass slaughter of Jews during WWII.”
The two institutions that have committed to open branch campuses thus far -- Cornell’s Weill Medical College and Virginia Commonwealth University -- insist that they are not in it for the money.
“We would not have gone forward if we didn’t think it fit in with our vision of the globalization of medicine and if we didn’t think we could make a significant contribution in an important part of the world,” says Antonio M. Gotto, dean of the New York City-based medical school. “But we also wouldn’t have done it if it put Cornell at financial risk.”
Cornell is receiving $750-million over 11 years, plus an undisclosed gift. (The university says its agreement with Qatar prohibits it from revealing the amount.) Virginia Commonwealth’s design program in the United States received $50-million, plus a building for the Qatar campus that would be worth around $25-million if it were built on the home campus, in Richmond, Va.
Still, some question whether colleges take too big a risk creating full-fledged branch campuses that bear their names and offer their degrees in a remote and potentially dangerous part of the world. Despite its reputation as a relatively safe oasis in the Middle East, Qatar has become a much scarier place for Americans since the September 11 terrorist attacks and the buildup of U.S. troops in Qatar in preparation for a possible invasion of Iraq. In February, the U.S. Department of State urged Americans in Qatar to “exercise a high level of security awareness” because they might be targets for terrorists. The World Trade Organization hesitated before holding its global ministerial conference in Doha in November. It went ahead under tight security.
Both Cornell and Virginia Commonwealth have concluded that it’s safe for them to operate in Qatar, but they have taken extra security precautions -- among other steps, hiring private intelligence services to keep them informed of potential threats -- and have emergency-evacuation plans at hand.
Modern Conveniences
Unlike some countries in the Arab world, Qatar boasts a relatively high per-capita income -- $17,000 a year in 1999 compared with $9,000 in adjacent Saudi Arabia (and $31,500 in the United States) -- and plenty of modern conveniences, like ATM’s. English is widely spoken.
Tourists can bargain in the souks, or traditional marketplaces, go to shopping malls, watch horse races, play golf, or take their children to an amusement park, Al Aladdin’s Kingdom. Despite oppressive heat much of the year -- the temperature often tops 110 degrees Fahrenheit in summertime -- the country’s capital is a modern seaport with a low crime rate.
“I’d be more afraid walking in downtown Richmond late at night than I would in downtown Doha,” says Paul Petrie, who works in Doha as an associate dean in charge of the Virginia Commonwealth program.
The emirate’s rulers are also trying to attract elite business, engineering, and information-technology programs. Initially for undergraduates, the programs are intended to offer core liberal-arts courses and to branch out into graduate education. The “education city,” eventually comprising kindergarten through graduate instruction, will make Qatar “the education center of the Middle East,” foundation officials say.
“Many of our region’s higher-education institutions have been of average quality, and few, if any, have achieved international recognition,” says Mohammed Fathy Saoud, higher-education adviser to the foundation. “We want to encourage our top students to stay at home rather than going abroad.”
When American educators raise concerns about security and human rights, “we invite them to come and stay with us and see how secure and stable this country really is, and how friendly and open people are,” he says.
Halted Deals
Many American universities, while intrigued by the idea of cooperating with Qatar, have concluded that it would be unwise to start programs there. Officials at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Virginia all spent a year or more studying proposals and traveling back and forth to Qatar -- North Carolina sent a contingent of 60 faculty and staff members in November 2001 -- only to abandon the idea. Qatar Foundation officials say they are talking with administrators of Carnegie Mellon University and Indiana University at Bloomington about opening programs in business and information technology, as well as some core liberal-arts courses.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks has been finding enough top-notch faculty members willing to uproot families and careers and move to the Persian Gulf. Because the universities opening campuses in Qatar are putting their names on the institutions -- and promising to offer programs equal in quality to those on their American campuses -- they can’t rely on the limited number of locally trained professors.
Despite reports that a disagreement over money led to the breakdown of North Carolina’s negotiations with Qatar this year, the dean of the business school cites faculty recruitment as the stumbling block. “The No. 1 area where we couldn’t agree was on the number and duration of Chapel Hill faculty who would be in Qatar not for six or seven weeks, but for a year or two or more,” says Robert S. Sullivan, the dean. “It was something faculty were reluctant to do, particularly with the tensions building in the region.”
Dennis A. Rondinelli, a professor of management at North Carolina who opposed the idea of setting up a Qatar campus, says such problems should be expected. “It can be difficult to staff and sustain recruitment at overseas campuses over a long period of time, even where conditions are more favorable. Very often, universities end up staffing the campuses with adjunct faculty members who have little connection to the university -- and after a while, it begins to look like a franchise operation.” A university’s reputation may suffer as a result.
Money was a sticking point in the negotiations, but not a major one, Mr. Sullivan insists. The business school wanted $35-million, a sum that would provide faculty members with a 40-percent pay bonus, free housing, travel, education for their children, and extensive security measures on the campus. Qatari officials reportedly offered only $10-million, North Carolina newspapers reported.
“None of the other universities were offered anything near what Cornell was getting,” Mr. Rondinelli says. “That was the beginning of the disillusionment. All of a sudden, you begin to see the complexities and the problems, and it doesn’t look nearly as appealing.”
Mr. Sullivan says critics who accuse the university of being money-grubbing are “naive and ill-informed.”
“This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to engage an important part of the world as a learning-and-research center and to have the resources to do it.”
A Moderating Monarchy
A few years earlier, as head of the Faculty Senate at the University of Virginia, David T. Gies went along on a fact-finding trip to Qatar. The university delegation, given free rein to explore the country and its schools, found that women play key roles in the education system.
In particular, Mr. Gies says, he found the emir’s wife, Sheikha Mouza Bint Nasser Al-Misnad, who heads the Qatar Foundation, “articulate, informed, and clear-headed” about the country’s opportunity to expand access to modern education and technology in the Middle East.
Women in the delegation were similarly impressed by the possibilities. One member of the delegation, Polley A. McClure, a former vice president for information technologies, says she felt comfortable jogging on the beach, her head uncovered and wearing a T-shirt and jogging shorts. “I came back fully convinced that this was a terrific thing to do,” she says. “It strikes me that if we are going to lurch toward peace in the world, one does this by taking down cultural walls, not building them.”
Like many other faculty members, Mr. Gies had questions about Qatar’s record on human rights. The country is led by a monarch who has absolute power. The U.S. State Department noted in its most recent report, in 2000, that Qatar bans political parties and demonstrations, and severely limits freedom of association. The international group Human Rights Watch criticized the World Trade Organization’s decision to meet in Qatar, saying the consequent message was that “it’s OK to build the global economy on a foundation of repression.”
But the emirate has, in recent years, taken steps toward democracy. Its first municipal elections were held in 1999, and the following year, the government set up a constitutional commission to create a model for an elected national parliament. The Virginia delegation, like most others that have traveled there, came back feeling optimistic that the country was moving in the right direction and could be a moderating force in the region.
Nonetheless, Virginia decided in 1999 to forgo a campus in Qatar. The official explanation was that the university couldn’t come up with an administrative structure that would satisfy accreditors. Mr. Gies believes that a change in leadership at the Qatar Foundation was also partly responsible. “From what I’ve heard, at that point, many of the assumptions about finances and academic control began to change,” he says. Some universities were disappointed to find that they would be receiving less money, and would have less control, than they had assumed.
The foundation moved on to approach the University of Texas, where, after lengthy negotiations, both the engineering and business schools said no thanks. “We decided that managing an engineering college on the other side of the world would detract too much from our mission in Austin,” says the engineering dean, Ben G. Streetman.
Then it was on to Texas A&M University, which, like the University of Texas, has a renowned engineering program. “It’s a very exciting opportunity, but we’re still doing our homework,” says Texas A&M’s provost, Ronald G. Doug-las, who recently traveled with a university delegation to Qatar.
That homework will include keeping a careful watch on Cornell and Virginia Commonwealth as they move forward with their programs.
Cornell Pioneers
The Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, as the school is called, will offer the same curriculum as Cornell’s medical school in New York. It will be not only the first medical school in Qatar -- and the country’s first coeducational institution of higher education -- but also the first foreign branch of an American medical school.
Cornell will offer a six-year program; the two-year premedical curriculum starts this fall, and the four-year medical program will begin in 2004. The goal is for 70 percent of the students to be from Qatar, with most of the rest from elsewhere in the Arab world.
Cornell has hired seven full-time and three part-time professors -- all men -- to teach this fall. Eight of the 10 are American, and seven of them have taught either at Cornell’s medical school or on the main campus, in Ithaca. Other hires include a German physicist who earned his doctorate from Cornell, a Canadian physicist, and a former faculty member at Ithaca College who has been teaching in the United Arab Emirates.
The new dean of Cornell’s Qatar medical school, Daniel Alonso, says that as far as he knows, none of the professors hired thus far are Jewish, but that he has received assurances that both female and Jewish professors or students would be welcome there. “There may be some self-selection taking place,” Dr. Alonso acknowledges. “This is a painful part of the world for many Jewish people. But it’s not just Jews. Many people are uncomfortable coming here at a time when, every other day, the president is talking about bombing Iraq.” The school continues to try to recruit women to teach in Qatar, and has hired two female teaching assistants as well as a few female administrators. If candidates can be persuaded to visit, he says, “they see that this is a friendly and safe place.”
Cornell’s agreement with the Qatar Foundation calls for Cornell to have complete control over curriculum and hiring. But Risa L. Lieberwitz, an associate professor of collective bargaining, law, and history at Cornell, argues that with the Qatar Foundation paying all of the expenses, including those for the buildings, faculty salaries, and management fees, the branch campus will be completely dependent on the foundation and, by extension, the emir.
“Even though the administration has assured us Cornell will have complete control, there are subtle, insidious ways that compromises can be made,” she says. “There can be all kinds of ways of rationalizing decisions in which the influence of money doesn’t appear on the surface.” For instance, since the Qatari royal family has a history of diabetes, it could put pressure on the school to focus its research on that disease. Or it could pressure the administration to fire a professor who criticized the Qatari government, she says.
Making Compromises
But compromises aren’t necessarily bad, say administrators at Virginia Commonwealth. The royal family wanted a design building that looked like a Qatari palace, while Mr. Petrie, the associate dean, favored a more contemporary design. The solution? The 48,000-square-foot building has a palatial facade and a modern interior with a mix of styles, including filigreed Arabic screens, arched windows, and a 40-foot-wide wall of stained glass.
Inside, the students, all of them women, study graphics, fashion, and interior design. University officials have lofty goals for the program. “By teaching the American approach to design, we believe we can have a political impact on the country,” says Richard Toscan, dean of the School of the Arts. “That openness of thought is a tremendous political statement in any country that has a hierarchical structure.”
Although both men and women serve on the faculty, the program is currently open only to female students; it will probably begin accepting men within three to five years. Although Virginia Commonwealth itself is coeducational, administrators felt that men would be ill-prepared to enter the Qatari program. (A recent focus by Qatari school administrators on improving education for girls in the country’s segregated schools, along with a high level of motivation among many girls, has resulted in an education disparity between the sexes.)
Under the Abbaya
Despite their traditional garb, the Qatari women are eager to try out new ideas, faculty members say.
“Our students would walk into our building wearing the traditional shayla and abbaya [the traditional black head covering and loose robe] and underneath, they’d have the most amazing designer clothes,” says Chris Gentile, an assistant professor of art who just completed two years of teaching on the Qatar campus. “Many of these women are very worldly.”
Within the confines of the college, the women can take off their abbayas and display their fashions to each other.
The clothes they design, which blend Western and local influences, can be worn by the thousands of foreigners living in Qatar, and by Muslim women during family gatherings, which are usually segregated by sex.
“The country is full of contrasts and contradictions,” Mr. Gentile says.
“Being a teacher there has been an amazing learning experience for me.”
It will continue to be so for the dozens of American educators who travel almost halfway around the world to participate in Qatar’s “education city.” The budding relationship between educators in two very different countries is still a courtship -- and a long way from a marriage.
http://chronicle.com Section: International Volume 49, Issue 2, Page A55