The Branch Campus: Globalization and US Universities in the Gulf
BY RANDA KAYYALI
Supply and demand has fuelled the circuits of production at the global level for many years now. Like other products, the offerings from higher education institutions have changed over the years. From the 1960s on, student exchanges were the dominant form of international education, but there are newer forms of global outreach by US colleges, and universities: online offerings, joint programs with local colleges and the establishment of branches abroad. While all the programs that dealt with international issues were once under the campus’ international office, a more systematic integration of the influence and institutional reach across national borders has permeated the teaching and administrative departments, and even the missions of many US universities. These extensive developments are a testament to the fact that one of the core social institutions, education and more specifically higher education, is increasingly becoming both commercialized and globalized.
The creation of university branches – campuses of universities in locations apart from the original – has been implemented in places that are deemed to be profitable in the long term. In the oil-rich Gulf region, a number of US universities have established branch campuses, including our own George Mason campus in Ras al Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which was opened in Fall 2005. While Dubai, Abu Dhabi and other locations in the UAE have been popular destinations for branches of US universities in the Gulf, Qatar is also a competitive destination.
Qatar has played a pivotal role in the expansion of US higher education in the Gulf region through the leadership and guidance of the ruling Al-Thani family, the Qatar Foundation and the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute, a non-profit think tank. The creation of a knowledge economy became one of the state’s priorities after the 1995 bloodless coup that installed the progressive Al-Thani emir, Amir Hamad bin Khalifa. The establishment and funding of new higher education offerings followed and in 2003 the first and only branch campus in the world, Education City, was inaugurated just outside the capital, Doha.
Located on a 2,500-acre campus, Education City has the largest concentration of US learning facilities outside of the country. The campus includes residential and recreational facilities as well as five US universities branches — Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Cornell University, Texas A&M, Carnegie Mellon University, and Georgetown University. Only certain programs from each of these universities have been opened in Qatar, a testament to the segmented nature of the export of US higher education.
The scope of the project remains small: in 2005 there were only 800 students with 60 percent of students enrolled in Education City being Qatari and 40 percent being non-Qataris, including a few Iraqis on scholarship. In a state with a population of 850,000 where 23.5 percent of the residents are believed to be citizens, it is not surprising that a national project would involve non-Qatari students. In fact, it seems that the Qatari nationals are over-represented in the student body in terms of the population. This is likely due to the offer of full funding provided by the state to Qatari citizens wishing to attend university. Despite this financial incentive, many Qataris continue to choose the University of Qatar over Education City.
The first US university to offer classes there preceded the official inauguration of Education City by six years. When it began offering classes in 1997, VCU was the first US university to open a branch in Education City. Although it is a co-ed public university in the US, it opened as a women’s only campus to cater to the demand for a local outlet for women’s education that was outside of the public university. The University of Qatar has sex-segregated sections for men and women in all of its faculties, with the exception of the engineering faculty which is only open to men. VCU was conforming to the current norms in Qatari education by creating a women’s school but the choice also indicated a prioritization of women’s higher education at the outset of the project. There has been a recent and controversial decision to start admitting men in a few years that has been opposed by many female students who speak of “the perceived need to become more ladylike and quiet once men are admitted.” Although sex-segregated education is indeed traditional, VCU departs from the model of women’s higher education in the Gulf in two significant ways: it is not a teacher training school and it offers a bachelor’s liberal arts degree with a US-based curriculum.
Cornell began offering courses in Qatar in 2002, becoming the first US institution to offer an MD degree overseas. The Weill Cornell Medical College is located in New Y ork City and so already forms a branch campus of the upstate Cornell University’s main campus in Ithaca, New Y ork. The founders of the Weill Cornell Medical College- Qatar (WCMC-Q) worked with the Hamad Medical Corporation to recruit qualified physicians with the required credentials to become faculty at the medical school alongside US faculty members. Weill Cornell now offers two degrees in Education City, a two-year pre-med degree and a four-year medical program to male and female students. Upon completion of their degrees, graduates exit with the same qualifications as Cornell in New Y ork.
Texas A&M established an engineering undergrad program in Qatar in 2003, offering bachelor’s of science degrees in petroleum, chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering to both men and women. Since women are barred from attending the University of Qatar’s faculty of engineering, Texas A&M is the only place that a Qatari or Qatari-based woman can study engineering. Faculty is appointed to their positions in Qatar for one to three-year terms so the professors are transnational and teach similar material in both countries. The engineering-only school runs two research centers – one dedicated to the environment and the other to liquefied natural gas exploration. Since Qatar has the world’s largest gas reserves, the training is clearly applicable to industries within the state as well as the region. The Texas A&M program in Qatar runs one of the most powerful systems of supercomputers in the world that is used for analyzing chemical properties and allows for research collaboration with Texas A&M colleagues in their home campus in College Station, Texas. Such computer capabilities facilitate research across continents and contribute to the ability to globalize research in addition to university expansion.
Another way of utilizing technology for the globalized university is teleconferencing. Carnegie Mellon, which offers undergraduate degrees in business and computer science to both men and women in Qatar, simultaneously teleconferences classes in Pittsburgh and Doha, enabling senior professors to be in two places at once, maximizing their time and the university’s resources.
The latest addition to Education City is Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. In 2005, Georgetown began offering a bachelor’s degree in Foreign Service with a strong focus on international affairs. As a Jesuit institution, Georgetown is the only religiously affiliated university and stands out against the backdrop of the secular educational programs of the other US universities. Like many of the other universities in Education City, Georgetown’s stated mission is to bridge cultural differences and nurture citizen leaders.
Only certain programs from each of these universities have been opened. The programs are selected and imported directly from top US universities to create a globally savvy workforce as part of a national strategy to gain global and regional prominence. Men and women’s education are focused on addressing the national and regional economic needs through degrees and skills in engineering, medicine, business, computer science as well as diplomacy. The programs are oriented to the vocational and technical spectrum of education, but not at a manual labor level. With the exception of VCU, the focus here is not a general education, rather, the programs are geared towards the job marketplace and the practical application of skills needed for healthcare, industry and business. The evaluation of these needs is tempered by what is considered socially acceptable for students in the Gulf. The pre-professionalism of the programs is clear and intentional: there is no wood shop or electrician’s course on offer in Education City. As one author wrote, “Many people in the Gulf still value white-collar jobs much higher than blue-collar ones.”
The juxtaposition of business, engineering and computer science programs with the neighboring Qatar Science and Technology Park, located on the Education City campus, is not a coincidence. Part of the strategy plan behind Education City is to provide a pool of highly trained graduates to be employed in their fields by businesses and projects located in Qatar. The education and employment of students goes hand-in-hand in the planning of the globalization of higher education and the advancement of national economic goals.
All of the universities located in Education City are from the US, indicating that the national origins of the products and their identity are tightly intertwined with global hegemonic positions. The programs are disassembled and reproduced abroad – many of the university websites boast that the classes, curriculum and quality are the same in Qatar as in the United States. The educational institutions are fully commodified, and the programs selected are (theoretically) imported wholesale through the branch campus concept that leaves the university brand intact through standardization
Yet, the local social structure controls the parameters of the education offered from gender restrictions to the programs offered. The hybridization of the branch campus, while blithely ignored in the public relations materials, is alive and well. The university’s global outreach is combined with the local tastes in a process more accurately called glocalization than standardization.
Education as a public good is traversed and penetrated by the logic of global capital and both private and public US institutions are lured by the financial incentives offered to them in Education City: free infrastructure, guaranteed tuition payment for Qatari citizens, subsidized housing and a pool of eager students. In addition, there is some prestige offered to US universities in expanding abroad. Some stateside decision makers, usually the Dean or Provost, publicly link the choice to branch out with a post-9/11 moral imperative. Rather than mentioning the admission of students from abroad to their US campuses, some university officials state that fostering better dialogue and relations with Arab- Muslim societies is the main motivation for establishing a branch in the Gulf region. However, the undercurrents in the university’s and the nation’s public good rhetoric are that of global demand and supply.
Randa Kayyali (rkayyali@gmu.edu) is a doctoral student in Cultural Studies (http://culturalstudies.gmu.edu). This article was first published in print and citations have been removed due to space limitations, but are available from the author.
