A different strategy
When China and India attract foreign business works based on a “low cost” strategy, others also attract foreign investment works but based on a different strategy: The “high skills” strategy. These countries are anticipating of the coming of the second wave of globalization where good high paying jobs go to where skilled workers live. Of course, where the high paying jobs go, the economy prospers. To achieve that, these countries must have abundant number of skilled workers, which means they must invest in quality education.
Singapore, Malaysia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates are following this second strategy and they have been planning for this for many years. To make sure that they have the best education systems, these countries have created an education improvement plans that combine local and top international universities training programs together to make them the best in the world. The plan is focusing on having their best students to go to school at home rather than go abroad to study. They do not want their students after having a good education abroad decide to stay there instead of returning home.
Qatar university has training programs from several top U.S Schools such as Cornell University (Medical and life science) and Carnegie Mellon University (Engineering and computer); Abu Dhabi university has training programs from New York University and Sorbonne university. Both universities have attract a lot of students in the Middle East who want to receive higher level of education without leaving their own countries. In just few years, these countries are now establish a large intellectual community and competent work forces there and many business have been moving in steadily.
To have the best education from the U.S requires significant investments. Dr. Hasnah, vice president of the Qatar Education Foundation said that he has planned for many years for this education program. He sent Qatar's professors to Cornell and Carnegie Mellon for training so they can teach programs from these two to U.S universities. He also carefully selected students into these programs because only the best will make a difference in the future of his countries. He said: “A lot of countries want to improve education but they did not have good plans. Creating a training plan that meet the needs of the industry requires a lot of time and efforts. Instead of create a new training program for our country, we choose to adopt training programs from the best schools in the U.S and brought them to Qatar. However, invest in training program is only one factor. You cannot expect good training program alone to bring good results. A good training program needs good professors and good students to be effective. There is a false sense that a country can achieve excellence across a wide range of fields by just bringing in the training programs. In reality, no country can be excellent in everything so you must select few areas and concentrate on them. Having too many programs confuse students and dilute the talents. That is why currently we are focusing on medical, business, engineering, and biotechnology.”
To make sure that their programs are recognized globally, these two universities have requested accreditation so that their degrees can be considered similar and comparable with Europe and the United States. The Commission for Academic Accreditation reviews both universities and issued accreditation to both these schools so students who graduated from these programs can be accepted anywhere because their schools were recognized in both the U.S and Europe.
Today Qatar has one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Between 2002 and 2010 its GDP increased by 28% per year on average. Although oil and gas has been the most significant industry throughout this period but with a highly educated workforces, there has also been increasing investment in other areas such as financial services, health and education. These rapid growth have led to Qatar having amongst the highest GDP per capita in the world. According to the IMF's World Economic Outlook database, the GDP per capita in Qatar in 2010 was US$65,000. The continued growth in the economy, together with the investment by the government as part of its efforts to diversify the economy, mean that there will be many business opportunities in Qatar in future years. While companies are reducing investments elsewhere but in Qatar there are large ongoing investments, with more on the way.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
