Innovation in a Small State: Qatar and the IBC Cluster Model of Higher Education

Abstract

The expansion of higher education across the globe is among the most profound developments of the last century, 1 with deep and broad ranging impact on societies, national economies, culture, attitudes and values. In 1900, about half a million students were enrolled in colleges and universities globally, or about 1% of the global college-aged population. By the end of the century, over 100 million students were enrolled, nearly 20% of the population of eligible youth. 2 Economic development is a significant factor in this massive expansion: “governments in many countries have come to believe that higher education is an engine of economic development,” and there is abundant evidence to support the belief. 3 Almost all countries host at least one national university, and these are usually considered central institutions for training the workforce and preserving cultural traditions and heritage. Among the Arab states of the Persian Gulf generally, the combination of a massive labor deficit, the abundance of discretionary wealth, and the overall lackluster performance of indigenous higher education systems propelled the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain to pursue “bold policy implementation” in the higher education arena. 4 Across the Persian Gulf, the higher education sector has become “a fertile zone of experimentation and entrepreneurship.” 5 The boldest — and by far the most expensive and prominent — of these initiatives has been the pursuit of international branch campuses (IBCs) of universities in the U.S. and Europe. IBCs have been in existence for nearly sixty years. While the UAE introduced the first IBC to the Gulf, and supports the largest number of them by far anywhere in the world, Qatar's Education City is an altogether new organizational form — an assemblage of 8 international branch campuses of U.S. and European universities combined into a single hub. In a region where much of what is considered innovative involves borrowing or importing from other contexts, Education City is a completely unprecedented development in the field of IBCs and global higher education. multiple IBCs operated by foreign universities from different sending countries formally de-coupled from each other but loosely affiliated through joint programs and research projects, cross-registration of students, administrative consultation, and other collaborations; complete autonomy over curriculum, hiring, admissions, and other core functions of the university's mission; equivalence between the curriculum and degrees conferred on the home campus and through the IBC; the existence of an integrative structure operated by the host country that mobilizes IBCs for joint educational programs, collective research initiatives, and other campus-by-campus collaborations, as well as manage some common administrative functions like financial aid and capital development; and complete funding by the host country for all personnel, building and operating expenses. This paper will examine some of the forces responsible for and describe the evolution of the IBC cluster model in Doha. After setting the context for Education City's role in Qatar's higher education strategy, we will review the unique constraints on small states as they develop a system of higher education. We will also situate Qatar's choice to pursue an IBC strategy within the development of IBCs globally and in the MENA region, before reviewing what little is known or can be surmised 7 about the factors that influenced Qatar's choice to devise a new model for national education. Finally, we will consider what all of this tells us about the ongoing process of educational innovation in Qatar. Like many developing societies, Qatar has turned to education as a primary vehicle for addressing the challenges of national development. The vision of education among Qatar's elite, however, is considerably more ambitious than most developing societies. 8 As first laid out in the Qatar National Vision 2030, Qatar's leadership expects that educational expansion and reform will transform Qatar's carbon economy to a “post-carbon” economy, or a “knowledge economy.” Educational and research institutions will not only train the workforce, they will become the workforce. Qatar created an institutional complex, Education City, which is intended to spearhead this transformation of the economy. … the Arab Gulf States are still generally considered to be part of the educational ‘periphery’ on the basis that they lack developed knowledge-based economies and embedded research culture, and because they rely on imported products such as materials, services, and expertise from the centre. 9 For these reasons and more, the choice of a “knowledge economy” as a development strategy is an implausible one for Qatar except for one important (and obvious) social fact — Qatar is staggeringly wealthy. As the world's largest producer of liquefied natural gas, in a few short years, Qatar has begun to top the list of countries ranked by GDP per capita when purchasing power parity is factored, according to the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (separately). 10 While growth rates since 2004 have fluctuated, most years saw annual growth at rates between 12% and 21%. 11 Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, controlled by the Qatar Investment Authority, is estimated well in excess of USD $100 billion as of February 2014 and is commonly thought to be the largest such fund in the world. 12 Qatar's wealth, then, compensates for the deficits in its labor pool by allowing it to attract millions of manual laborers and professional expatriates to serve the economy and pursue its ambitious plans for development. The capital city, Doha, now a metropolis with more than 2 million residents, had less than 500,000 residents in 1995. This is more than a four-fold increase in less than 25 years (and most of that growth has occurred since 2005, when the population was about 821,000). 13 This rapid increase is not the result of natural population growth, but rather a highly planned effort to recruit workers from around the world. The constraints on Qatar's development choices pushed the leadership to adapt a mixed strategy of traditional and innovative approaches to educational development. Qatar invested substantially in reforms of the elementary and secondary school system. It also invested heavily in the national university, Qatar University, to expand access, improve its educational programs, adapt them to the needs of Qatar's society and workforce, and expand its capacity to conduct research. It recruited global education professionals — most notably the RAND Corporation — to advise and assist with development and reform plans for the entire educational system. It also paid close attention to global educational benchmarks and standards set by UNESCO, OECD, and the World Bank. 14 School reforms, establishment of a national university, and recruitment of global consultants are among the most common higher education development strategies among states in the developing world, even if most states do not possess Qatar's wealth. Education City, Qatar Foundation's massive flagship educational project, is perhaps the largest single educational project undertaken anywhere in the world. Situated in 2500 acres on the western outskirts of the capital, Doha, Education City provides a nearly complete range of educational opportunities (except doctoral programs) for pre-school children through to university students. Its elementary and secondary school offerings include a highly regarded K-12 school (Qatar Academy), an international school on the International Baccalaureate model (Al Jazeera Academy), a school for children with special needs (Awsaj Academy), an Academic Bridge Program which prepares high school graduates for college admission, and the Learning Center, an educational training and services facility. The crux of the “knowledge hub,” however, is found in its collection of international branch campuses. Education City is comprised of eight international branch campuses currently operated by American and European universities. Most campuses offer undergraduate degrees only, but a few offer Master's degrees, and one (Weil-Cornell) offers a medical degree, the first and only U.S. medical degree to be offered outside the United States. The IBCs of Education City include Virginia Commonwealth University, Cornell University's Weil Medical College, Texas A & M University, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, Northwestern University, University College of London, and Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Paris. Education City also supports two universities operated directly by Qatar Foundation, the Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies and Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Education City is entirely funded by Qatar Foundation, which also collects tuition, manages a generous student loan program, maintains plush dormitories for international students and a large student center with extensive recreational facilities. Chart 1.1 lists the names and founding years for all degree-granting higher education institutions in Qatar as of 2014. Founding of Colleges and Universities in Qatar * Indicates affiliation with Education City Education City is also certainly among the most expensive national education projects in the world. Exact figures for the total investment are not available to the public, but reportedly the annual outlay for capital projects, personnel, and maintenance was upwards of $2 billion in 2008. 15 The annual operating budget for Cornell's Weil Medical College, established in 2001, was reputed to be an average of USD $68 million annually for eleven years, with an additional up-front payment between USD $10 and $50 million to defray costs in New York associated with operating an overseas campus. 16 The sheer scale of Education City, however, is less significant than the innovation it represents in the evolution of international branch campuses. While IBCs have been in operation since 1955, not until Education City had multiple IBCs been assembled into a combined campus, “a university of universities”. 17 Despite Qatar's affluence, because of its small size, it faces a set of special logistical challenges. In this section, we will review some of the key issues confronting small states as they build a system of higher education. Small states make up a significant minority of the world's governments. While threshold definitions of small states vary from 1.5 to 5 million, 66 (or 34%) of the 193 member states of the United Nations recorded populations 18 of 3 million or less in 2008. 19 Small states have long been recognized as special cases of state formation, subject to separate dynamics of development from the majority of states around the globe. 20 This is no less true when considering state processes of planning and managing institutions of higher education. “Post-secondary education is expensive, and costs assume greater prominence in small economies than in large ones. This observation would be valid even if unit costs were the same in small states as in large ones. In practice, however, unit costs are usually greater in small states first because institutions have to employ expatriates, and second because they find it difficult to achieve economies of scale.” 23 In their study of the national educational systems of 79 countries with a resident population of 1.5 million or less in 1990, Bray and Packer concluded that “In countries at the lower end of the population scale, some dependence on external support seems inevitable … [F]or the smallest of small states this type of pattern is inescapable.” 25 This dependence comes in a variety of forms: expatriate teachers and administrators, teacher training by external bodies (run either in or out of the host country), management of national examinations by external bodies, foreign exchange programs and scholarship programs, foreign development aid, importation of curricula, textbook production, and so forth. 26 Even in highly developed small societies, limits on capacity propel states to search abroad for assistance. In Lichtenstein and Luxembourg, for example, prospective teachers must complete some or all of their training in other countries. In contrast to these constraints, there is at least one significant potential advantage that small states enjoy because of their size. Typically, the community of professional educators and educational administrators in small states is correspondingly small. With sometimes only a few hundred professionals, educators are easily known to each other and are in regular professional and social interaction. Unlike large national educational bureaucracies — which are characterized by hierarchical decision-making and entrenched politics — small professional communities are characterized by “familiarity, regular contact, common professional experience, and the opportunity of working in small teams.” 27 This can lead to an environment that fosters shared understandings of collective problems and priorities, as well as reduces the political complexity of settling upon common strategies to address these problems. 28 This is probably the key reason why, despite the long list of liabilities from size identified by Bray and Packer, the authors conclude that there is considerable “evidence of innovation and initiative in many small [educational] systems.” 29 To fully appreciate the innovative dimensions of Qatar's IBC cluster model, it is also necessary to understand the emergence of international branch campuses as an organizational model for higher education. The best data available on the growth of the IBCs comes from the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education. The Observatory consists of a small team of researchers in the UK that track the development of international branch campuses. Based on a short survey and supplemented by an extensive review of websites, the Observatory released its first report in 2002, followed by substantial updates in 2006, 2009, and 2012. A higher education institution that is located in another country from the institution which either originated it or operates it, with some physical presence in the host country, and which awards at least one degree in the host country that is accredited in the country of the originating institution. 31 Cumulative Count of Opened and Closed International Branch Campuses (IBCs), 1955–2012 Chart compiled by Emad Hassan for author. Source: W. Lawton and A. Katsomitros, International Branch Campuses: Data and Development (Oxford: The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, 2012). Distribution of Open, Closed and Planned IBCs by World Region, 2011 Chart compiled by Emad Hassan for author. Source: W. Lawton and A. Katsomitros, International Branch Campuses: Data and Development (Oxford: The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, 2012). Compared with all other regions, the Arab states of the Gulf have been the most influential force in the development and diffusion of IBCs. The United Arab Emirates opened the first IBC in the Gulf region in 1993, the University of Wollongong (Australia), followed by Manipal University (India) in 2000. As a result of a vigorous growth period in the first decade of the 2000s, the MENA region now accounts for 29.5% (or 59) of IBCs recorded in December 2011. However, 85% (or 50) of these are hosted in GCC countries: 37 in the United Arab Emirates, 10 in Qatar, and 3 in Bahrain. Except in the Gulf, the MENA region generally has not pursued the IBC model of higher education compared to other parts of the world — Israel hosts two U.S. IBCs, Clark University (1994) and Baruch College (n.d.); Lebanon hosts ESMOD (France 2001) and Islamic Azad University (Iran, n.d.); Jordan hosts the New York Institute of Technology (2001), and Iraq hosts Isik University (Turkey, 2012). Chart 1.4 compares the pattern of openings of IBCs in the MENA region with the rest of the world. Comparison of Annual Founding of IBCs in MENA Region vs. World, 1955–2012 Chart compiled by Emad Hassan for author. Source: W. Lawton and A. Katsomitros, International Branch Campuses: Data and Development (Oxford: The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, 2012). Another notable characteristic of the Gulf's experimentation with IBCs is the breadth of sending countries with which Gulf states have partnered. Qatar's reliance on U.S. (and some European) universities is entirely unlike Dubai, for example, which hosts a diverse mix of British, Belgian, American, Australian, Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, Russian, and Iranian institutions. 32 Nearly all of the Gulf IBCs have stood the test of time thus far, with only six IBCs listed as closed in the UAE (about 14% of UAE's entire IBC population). There have been no closings in Qatar or Bahrain to date. However, according to the 2012 report, “A shift in activity from the Middle East to the Far East is underway.” 33 For example, in addition to the 17 IBCs hosted by China in 2011, the Observatory reported plans for 7 additional IBCs. Tiny Singapore hosted 18 IBCs in 2011, with 3 additional campuses planned. In addition, East and Southeast Asian countries accounted for 10 of the 15 largest IBCs as measured by total student population size, compared to three campuses in the Gulf (two in Dubai and one in Bahrain). In contrast, among the 37 planned IBC's identified by the report — almost all of them scheduled to be opened in 2012 or 2013 — only one new IBC was underway in the MENA region at the time of the survey — a Turkish university scheduled to open in the Kurdish region of Iraq in 2012. In other words, the Observatory data suggest that the diffusion of IBCs in the Gulf and MENA regions has, for the time being, come to an end. While Qatar shares some of the same challenges as other small states, Qatar is also different in significant ways. Long before independence in 1971, Qatar turned to large numbers of skilled and unskilled foreign workers to address labor deficits as the economy developed. In fact, coastal cities across the Gulf have been for centuries comprised of substantial multi-ethnic populations because of the large amount of cross-border migration and trade within the Gulf and with the surrounding region. The discovery of oil and gas accelerated the pace of migration because of the promise of increased wealth and the availability of new employment. As early as 1935, Qatari elites struck agreements with foreign oil companies that allowed for the importation of “technical employees and the managers and clerks” 34 necessary for industry when locals were not available. While Qatari leadership assented to such policies, there was also considerable contestation as well, as when Sheikh Ali bin Abdullah Al-Thani demanded the expulsion of all foreign workers of Petroleum Development-Qatar in 1951. 35 Thus the labor deficit is a problem with which Qatari elites and Gulf states have struggled for at least a century. In Qatar, as with most small states, the higher education system was thought from the beginning to be the principal hope for overcoming — or at least balancing — the high dependence on foreign workers and for encouraging the diversification of the economy to include sectors other than those directly related to the production of the principal national resource, liquefied natural gas (LNG). 36 Prior to the founding of Qatar University — the first and only indigenous university in Qatar — the choices for those who aspired to higher education were severely limited. As Witte demonstrates, these consisted of enrollment in correspondence courses, typically with universities in Beirut, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt; or the more costly and culturally fraught option of education abroad. 37 In 1963, the Qatar Ministry of Education established a Department of Scholarships and Cultural Relations that promoted foreign education with some success. According to Ministry records, six male Qataris attended universities abroad in the academic year 1960–61. Twelve years after the establishment of the department, in academic year 1975–76, the Ministry recorded that 667 Qatari males and 166 Qatari females were enrolled in universities abroad. 38 Later in 1976, the Ministry rescinded scholarships for female students to study abroad, “for the sake of public welfare and the common will,” 39 although this did not keep the number of female students enrolled abroad from rising. In 1979–80, the Ministry recorded 711 males and 246 females. 40 By 1985–86, 1,000 Qataris were enrolled in higher education outside of Qatar, mostly in the Arab Middle East, the U.S., the U.K., and France. 41 As these graduates returned to Qatar, the status associated with a university degree increased, as did in turn, the demand for higher education. As Al-Misnad explains, these students “were given top jobs in government establishments. A university degree not only automatically provided a guarantee of a job in the government, but also a loan for building a house, buying a car, or even in some cases, wedding expenses.” 42 With the founding of Qatar University in 1977, higher education became more accessible to Qataris. The initial core of the university consisted of two teacher-training colleges established in 1973 after extensive consultation with foreign education experts at UNESCO, UNDP, Durham University, and Egyptian academics. The teacher colleges were reorganized into faculties of education, science, social science, humanities and Islamic studies in 1977. According to Witte, the founding of QU was “evolutionary in character and reflected the pressing concerns of policymakers,” 43 especially about the severe shortage of teachers at a time when primary and secondary school enrollment was expanding. “On its own, growing popular demand for more accessible tertiary education opportunities,” Witte argues, “was probably not a substantial enough reason for the establishment of a national university in the early 1970s.” 44 The Qatar government continued to fund Qatar University at great expense and introduced a series of reforms intended to make way for an international recruitment campaign for administrators and faculty. While it was the considered opinion of various consultative committees, appointed by the different Gulf States at different times, that the establishment of a university in each Gulf State was not justifiable on the basis of the small size of the indigenous population and of the extremely small number of national students eligible for university education, all these university projects eventually went ahead because all these states wanted to have their own national university.” 45 Witte suggests that Qatari leadership looked for alternatives to Qatar University because, all things considered, “Returns had generally been low.” 48 In an interview that Witte conducted with Sheikh Abdullah Al-Thani, Vice President for Education at Qatar Foundation at the time (and now President of Hamad Bin Khalifa University), Dr. Al-Thani identified that the primary issue in the minds of the leadership prior to Education City was how to provide a quality education for Qatari students. Dr. Al-Thani characterized the choice before the leadership as follows: “we knew we could work on establishing our own institutes or we could look to other models that could provide that sort of thing right away, immediately” (emphasis added). 49 An IBC cluster, however, was not the first choice for the leadership of Qatar Foundation. According to Witte's account, the preferred model was a single university, able to provide top quality instruction in four priority areas: medicine, engineering, business and computer science. According to Witte, the “small team” authorized by Qatar Foundation to search for the right institution found that American universities were more receptive to the idea of collaboration than the European universities that were approached. After a two year search and negotiation process, in the end, the board settled on University of Virginia in the United States. The vision was an unprecedented transplant campus, fully operated by UVA, much like New York University's campus in Abu Dhabi, which would not be established until over 10 years later. But in the mid 1990s, no such model existed anywhere in the world. However, while negotiations with UVA proceeded quite far, no deal emerged. Dr. Fathy Saoud, in an interview with Witte in 2008 when Saoud was President of Qatar Foundation, relayed that Qatar Foundation's board of directors was “adamant about bringing a university that was in the top 10 but we discovered that there was no one university that was best at everything”. 50 Kane's account of a separate interview with Dr. Saoud (sometime in September 2008) relays that the search was prompted by a “markets-need analysis wherein they identified a need for a medical school, an engineering school and a business school,” 51 apparently in that order. According to Saoud, QF first considered the medical schools of regional universities of which there are several high quality examples in Egypt, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, for instance. Saoud goes on to say that these were rejected because none of them had so far “been able to communicate on the international scene.” 52 QF's selection criteria were explicit: it would reject any ventures that simply proposed setting up an adjunct satellite institution; and it was only willing to recruit an institution that guaranteed to offer a medical education of the same caliber and was thus willing to confer the same degree as that offered in the United States. 53 In the absence of an authoritative account of the establishment of Qatar Foundation and Education City, it is difficult to say when exactly the idea of an IBC cluster model emerged. It is likely the idea emerged sometime between 1998 and 2001. Qatar Foundation's first agreement with an American university to provide education in Doha was made in 1998 with Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts. However, this was not initially a branch campus arrangement. 57 VCU ran educational programs but it was not authorized to grant a degree. Some in QF leadership believe that the decision to create an IBC cluster model was taken well after the arrangement with VCU. 58 In 2001, Qatar Foundation announced its agreement with Weil Cornell Medical School to open a branch campus and offer a complete medical degree. From that date, in rapid succession, Qatar Foundation announced deals with several elite American universities to open IBCs in Doha: Texas A & M in 2003, Carnegie Mellon in 2004, Georgetown in 2005, and Northwestern in 2008, followed by deals with two European universities, HEC Paris in 2010 and University College London in 2012. Currently, no other IBCs are planned for Education City. The 2001 agreement with Weil-Cornell ushered another innovation in the evolution of IBCs. This was the first time an American university offered a complete medical degree overseas — and one that was indistinguishable on record from the degree offered at the home campus. 59 Most of the Education City IBCs operate under this model. The curricula offered by the IBCs in Doha are by contract exactly the same as the curricula offered at the main campuses (with the exception of electives that vary with faculty expertise). In many cases, the diploma issued to students by the IBCs and the transcripts available to employers and graduate schools carry the name of the home institution only and do not indicate the location of the campus where coursework was completed for the degree. 60 Many of the IBCs in Doha take further measures to replicate and integrate the educational experience with the main campus. While not adopted by all campuses, these measures include hiring and rotation of main campus faculty with the campus in Doha; joint research projects between members of the respective faculties; use of state-of-the-art teleconference facilities to allow Education City students to enroll in main campus courses; inclusion of Doha students in class ranking with main campus; semester abroad programs and study trips that take Doha students to the main campus; and frequent travel between Doha and main campus by administrators, faculty, and students for joint projects, meetings, conferences, and ceremonies. For most years of its existence, it was not thought possible to replicate the Education City model, and there are persistent questions about the sustainability of the IBC cluster model. 61 It was considered far too expensive for other countries to emulate or adopt. This premise will be put to the test in the next ten years as two additional IBC clusters come on-line — Nazarbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan, and Songdo Global University in Incheon, Korea. See Chart 1.5 for a description of the planned configuration of IBCs that comprises each university, several of which have already opened. In their own ways, these campuses have already begun to push the cluster model further as they confront new sets of organizing challenges. For example, U.S. institutions administer all of the undergraduate programs in Education City. They operate under the same 3-credit course model pervasive throughout the American system of higher education. Among other benefits, this permits students to cross-register for classes and to complement their studies with a more diverse selection of electives. It also permits the operation of joint degree programs and minors with relative ease. Member Campuses of IBC Clusters in Kazakhstan and South Korea * Data for Nazarbayev University was taken from Olds and Robertson (2014) and for Songdo Global University from the university's website, accessed on April 29, 2014 (see http://www.sgu.or.kr/sgu/eng/inuniv/01_current.htm). … have had to merge two divergent m