Q Life Magazine Q Magazine (US) December 2015 | Page 20
| Issue 1
All these international students, professors,
and researchers have brought a culturally rich
and diverse community to Qatar and augmented
ties to the West, especially the United States.
Qatar Foundation, which created Education
City, sees it as another step in the country’s
transition to a knowledge-based economy
in the coming decades.
An Emphasis
on Education
One of the striking features of
Qatar is the focus on education.
“It’s not your traditional college experience,
that’s for sure,” says Haddad. She came to Doha
at age 17, when her family moved to Qatar
from Portland, Oregon, for her father’s work.
After graduating from high school in Doha she
wanted to go back to Oregon for college,
but her parents convinced her to try Qatar
for a year. She liked it, and ended up staying
for all four years of her program. The country has spent the last two decades
pressing ahead with a number of bold
initiatives to improve schooling at all levels,
and has made enormous strides. Primary
education is now almost universal and
literacy rates are well above the regional
average for both genders.
“There are lots of opportunities to do things you
wouldn’t be able to do otherwise,” Haddad says.
“Qatar is a stable country with a good economy,
and there’s a real diversity of opportunity.”
She helped organize TEDx events on campus,
and two events at the Cop18 Doha Climate
Change Conference in 2012. She also went on
study trips to both Indonesia and South Africa. A report by the British newspaper
The Independent concluded that Qatar
was the best country in the world for
women to pursue an education. This is
particularly true at the tertiary level, where
there are six women students for every
man; even in engineering, a field often
dominated by men, there were three times
more female than male graduates in 2014.
“Doha is a very dynamic place, ” Haddad says.
“It’s very different, and very rewarding.”
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Qatar’s success in education is helped by
the fact that Qatar offers many scholarships
to help its citizens further their education.
Foreign nationals—many young students
from neighboring Gulf or other Middle
Eastern countries—also receive a lot of
financial aid, both from Qatar Foundation
and the universities themselves.