QATAR: Foreign campuses link under college system

20 November 2011

Winning its bid to host the 2022 Fifa World Cup in Doha, the Gulf emirate of Qatar showed the rising power of the Middle East. Its landmark football stadium will cool summer temperatures of around 40 degrees with solar panel-powered air-conditioning as the international teams play to crowded stands, writes Stephen Hoare for The Independent.

However, an even more amazing transformation has already taken place on the arid outskirts of Doha, where branch campuses of international universities have clustered to create Education City, a new learning hub for the region.

Last year, the Qatar Foundation linked these branch campuses to create an overarching institution, the Hamad Bin Khalifa University, run along the lines of an Oxbridge college system. Universities have a semi-autonomous status but will employ increasing numbers of Qatari faculty and the integration of academic provision is ongoing.
Full report on the Independent site

Comment:

The comparison to the Oxbridge college system is over-stated; the individual branch campuses in Hamad Bin Khalifa University will continue to award their own degrees (i.e. their mother universities' degrees), while HBKU plans to introduce over the next several years their own postgraduate provision, and degrees, in addition to the branch campus degrees.

Thilo Rehren

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