Friday, September 7, 2007

Jesuits Expand Georgetown Into Qatar

Prior to 9/11, Arab students flocked to study in the United States, according to the Qatar Foundation’s Baxter, and, with few job prospects at home, many of them never returned.


“Education City wants to reverse the brain drain to become a brain magnet,” Baxter explained. In Doha there are now high-quality jobs for Education City graduates. In fact, students are often recruited by local businesses before they graduate.
The universities must provide the very same superior education their students receive in the United States. Charles Nailen, director of public affairs for Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar, who earned his Georgetown degree nearly 7,000 miles away in Washington, DC, said the Doha campus is an easy sell. “I love it,” he enthused. “I grew up at Georgetown. I have a vested interest in it. My Georgetown degree is worthless unless these students in Doha receive the exact same stellar education with their degrees.”
Dr. James Reardon-Anderson sets the bar high for his students.

The dean of Georgetown’s Qatar campus, Dr. James Reardon-Anderson, agreed. “We set the bar very high for our students and faculty,” he said. “Our name is our currency.”
Like the other schools, Georgetown has full control of its Qatar campus, including its curriculum, staff and admissions. Students are selected on the basis of merit, not nationality, religion, race, gender or wealth. The selection of students is more egalitarian than at any other Ivy League school, Reardon-Anderson said: “We don’t have to teach faculty or alumni kids. There is no effort to tilt the playing field.”




The selection committee doesn’t even look at an applicant’s financial situation. Once a student is accepted, the Qatar Foundation offers interest-free loans based on a family assessment. For each year a graduate stays on to work in Qatar, the loan is reduced by 10 percent—so if he or she stays and works long enough, there is no loan left to repay.



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