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College of the North Atlantic gets competition in Qatar
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.)
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JOEY COLEMAN