Canada's largest overseas higher education campus could face competition with the opening of Qatar's first American-style community college. The country's Supreme Education College is establishing the Community College of Qatar (CCQ) and has awarded a contract to Texas' Houston Community College (HCC) to open the campus this fall.

The country's approximately 350,000 citizens are presently served by only one college, a branch campus of Newfoundland's College of the North Atlantic (CNA).

Opened in 2002, the CNA - Qatar operates under a contract from the Qatari government and offers 2,300 students courses in four program areas. A large focus of the campus is training for students entering Qatar's oil and gas industries. 

HCC announced its five-year contract to establish and initially run CCQ on its website this week. By the end of the five-year contract, CCQ will be a fully independent Qatari run community college and will offer many of the same programs that CNA-Q presently provides.

Qatar's Minister of Education and Higher Education stated the government choose Houston Community College due to its international reputation for high standards and experience teaching programs in a similar economy. "The HCC programming is aligned with the educational needs of Qatar," His Excellency Saad Bin Ibrahim Al-Mahmoud stated in a news release.

Texas and Qatar have extensive existing bonds with the oil and gas sector being the largest single industry in both jurisdictions.  The Qatar flag carrier offers a daily non-stop flight between Houston and Doha.

In an e-mail interview, CNA president Jean Madill says she welcomes the addition of an American community college in the region. "We believe this recent announcement will assist the Qataris in fulfilling their educational needs." 

Ms. Madill says the College of the North Atlantic - Qatar is hoping it will have a role in assisting to establish the Community College of Qatar.

CNA-Q's 10-year contract, including a one-year extension, end in 2013, she says.  

The Qatari government has invested heavily in positioning the capital city of Doha as a higher education hub for the Middle East. The city is host to six American university branch programs, housed within the Qatar Foundation's "Education City," the University of Calgary School of Nursing operates a campus near the main hospital, and the Qatar Foundation is completing construction of the Middle East's largest medical research centre, the Sidra Medical and Research Centre. The Foundation also hosts the World Innovation Summit for Education.

As the internationalization of higher education continues, more countries are restricting the export of profits by North American institutions and increasingly looking to develop their own Westernized institutions. Doha, Qatar, which has the highest concentration of foreign non-MBA branch campuses of any city in the world, is a trend-setter for internationalization and the decision to begin naturalizing their higher education sector is likely to be repeated as other countries mature their own importation of Western education.

Canadian universities are looking at the newly opening markets of India and China. Both countries have recently announced changes to prevent or minimize profiteering by Western institutions. 

(Campus Editor: This post was changed to reflect the fact that Jean Madill is the president of College of the North Atlantic. A previous version had an incorrect title for her.)

An interesting thing happened this week in Ontario - an opposition critic brought a potential problem to the government's attention and the Premier didn't dismiss the critic's suggestion to alleviate it.

Ontario's post-secondary education critic Jim Wilson warned this week that an unprecedented increase in adults applying to Ontario's community colleges will cause an enrolment crisis if the government does not act immediately to meet the demand. He suggested a novel approach: how about using closed factories and vacant storefronts?  

The application deadline for September programs at the province's colleges passed on Monday and, while numbers are not yet available, it is expected that applications will increase by almost 15 per cent, with a significant portion of this increase caused by a large jump in non-high-school students applying to upgrade or earn credentials to re-enter the work force.

Premier Dalton McGuinty didn't dismiss the idea of using empty factories and storefronts, instead stating he would talk to his post-secondary education ministry about the idea. "It's an interesting idea and I think it would be irresponsible of me to reject it out of hand," Mr. McGuinty told The Canadian Press. 

The Premier said he would address the space crunch in the March provincial budget.

Mr. Wilson's rhetoric was overly political and accusatory towards the government, but he deserves credit for bringing attention to the space crunch and fulfilling the role of an opposition critic, which is to identify problems and suggest solutions. Colleges are the neglected little sibling of post-secondary education and there is rarely much political capital in devoting attention to them. 

The Premier was wise to consider the suggestions and not to engage in a partisan counterattack by dragging out the ghost of Mike Harris - the typical response of his government to criticism from the Progressive Conservative opposition.

In the end, students are the winners this week, if the March budget ensures funding is provided to ensure spaces for qualified students at Ontario's colleges.

The clock is ticking and the question is if anyone at Queen's Park takes action in the next ten days to prevent a strike at Ontario's community colleges.

The Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents full-time instructors at Ontario's public colleges, announced a February 11 strike deadline at a news conference today. 

Interestingly, the union has moderated its rhetoric and is even willing to accept binding arbitration to prevent a strike. "First and foremost, we want to reach a negotiated settlement," OPSEU bargaining chair Ted Montgomery said in a news release. "If the Colleges won't bargain that, we are willing to send all our outstanding issues to binding arbitration. The Colleges, however, must agree."

The announcement by the union that it is willing to accept binding arbitration - a likely outcome if a strike happens -  puts the ball firmly in the court of Ontario's colleges and their political masters in Premier Dalton McGuinty's office. 

(Colleges do not have the autonomy from government that universities enjoy and the government can issue directives requiring actions by the institutions - see Hassum v. Contestoga College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, 2008 CanLII 12838 [ON S.C.])

The question now is what the Premier plans to do. So far, he has offered empty platitudes calling on both sides to reach a negotiated agreement to prevent a strike. This lofty rhetoric is acceptable in most circumstances. This is not one of the those circumstances - the Premier has already poisoned the chalice by implementing flawed anti-labour provisions when his government rewrote the Colleges Collective Bargaining Act.

One of the primary reasons that students are caught in the crossfire was the decision by Ontario's colleges to use their newfound power in an attempt to bypass the collective bargaining process and impose a contract - power granted to them by Mr. McGuinty's government.

I e-mailed a spokesperson for John Milloy, Ontario's Minister of Training, Colleges, and Universities, after the union announced its strike deadline. The response from the government was to send me a link to a statement  issued by the Minister on January 13, calling for the two sides to return to the bargaining table.

It is time for the government to do more. The government has two choices: force Ontario's colleges to accept the union's very reasonable offer of binding arbitration, or force the two sides back to the table by setting a time and location for them to meet.

The government should also give Ontario's senior college administrators a little more incentive to negotiate. The Minister should send a directive informing all college administrators making more than $150,000 a year - and there are a lot of them - that their pay will be cut off in the event of a strike. 

I'm willing to bet the threat of a strike actually hurting them - instead of helping them balance their books - will assist them to act in the best interest of students.

Of course, the government can continue to whistle past the graveyard like it did during the York University strike - after all, that strike didn't hurt anyone, did it?

[Additional information: Union bargaining chair Ted Montgomery's speaking notes provided to the media at today's news conference are available online.]

[Jim Wilson, Ontario's Official Opposition critic for Colleges and Universities, held a news conference this morning criticizing the government's handling of the labour situation. His remarks are available online: http://tinyurl.com/yb3gm2q.]

With Ontario's college instructions barely giving their union a strike mandate there is an opportunity for both sides to forget past grievances and work anew to reach a negotiated agreement.

Much like a political leadership vote, there is a convention that a strike mandate requires a two-thirds majority to be considered successful. 

With only 57 per cent of college faculty voting for strike action, it is clear that the union does not have enough support to launch a successful strike action; even more so when the numbers are broken down by college campus. With the majority of faculty at four colleges voting against strike action, any attempt by OPSEU to quickly launch a labour disruption will be met with resistance from enough faculty members to doom any strike to failure.

Where does this leave students? The same place they were prior to the vote; sitting on the outside looking in and wondering what's next.

The truth is nobody really knows what will happen. The negotiations are occurring at a provincial level disconnected from both students and faculty. A strike will be the result of negotiators from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union bargaining team and the College Compensation and Appointments Council failing to act in good faith to reach an agreement.

Sadly, as I noted in December, the two sides have a strong personal dislike for each other, making the outside mediator's job a tough one.

With the strike vote out of the way, both sides need to negotiate and keep in mind that this vote doesn't work in either side's favour; faculty are divided but they are not siding with either party.

Over the past few days, I've spoken extensively with college faculty and the theme of those discussions are the same: They want a fair agreement without going on strike. I find they have a distrust of both their union and the college administrators. They are upset with the announcement by Ontario's colleges that they intend to impose a new non-negotiated contract. There is concern that their union is looking to make a statement by going on strike. In short, many of them are conflicted and this conflicted atmosphere is evident in the split in the strike vote.

There is a strong message in the split for Ontario's colleges: Their faculty are discontented and demoralized. This is a major problem that needs to be addressed, especially at Lambton college, where more than 80 per cent of the faculty voted in favour of strike action. The colleges need to be seen by their faculty to be acting in good faith instead of imposing a contract that struck out sections of the previous agreement.

The union, despite its public chest-puffing, has been told by its members not to rush into a strike. Technically, they have a strike mandate and legally, the union negotiators in Toronto can call a strike. In reality, they do not have enough support to run an effective strike. They are in no position to win a strike and will only harm their members by calling for one. Two recent higher education labour disputes illustrate the peril of OPSEU's current position.

The CUPE 3903 strike at York University was a dismal failure for the labour movement. While the membership of the union was behind the strike at the beginning, the public was not. An extremely poor communications strategy and horrible negotiating tactics resulted in overwhelming public distain for the strikers. The personal dislike between the negotiators for York University and CUPE dragged out the strike, which ultimately required the provincial legislature to end it with back-to-work legislation.

OPSEU faces an uphill battle to win over public opinion to their side and, judging by their communications following the strike vote, they have not figured out how to communicate to the middle-class parents they need the support of. Further, the history of animosity between OPSEU and the colleges is very similar to the York situation.

The recent teaching assistants' strike at McMaster University is a perfect illustration of what happens when a union's leadership decides to take a weak strike mandate and throw up picket lines without going back to their membership for a strong mandate.

The strike was a complete and utter failure with a large number of union members ignoring the picket lines and continuing to conduct tutorials. Eventually, the union was forced to allow its membership a vote on McMaster's contract offer; the membership accepted it and the union leadership were left with a humiliating defeat.

OPSEU would be wise to lower the temperature of its rhetoric and delay any strike plans until such time as they are in a position to win a strike.

They have not won the strike vote, nor have they lost. They have the attention of the media and the public; there is an opportunity for them to focus on the issues that they can win the battle of public opinion with. Victory is within reach, if only the labour movement would move past their old industrial-age ideas that a picket line is necessary for victory and move into the information age, in which intellectual actions are more effective than physical blockades.