DOHA: For decades, top students in this muggy Persian Gulf city travelled a long way to go to college, usually in the United States or Britain. After the Sept 11 attacks, some felt less welcome.
Now they needn't leave home. Using government coffers heaving with energy revenues, US allies in the Persian Gulf are spending billions to keep students at home by luring their favourite US and European universities here.
In Qatar, a gas-rich emirate that is slightly larger than Lebanon, five US universities have set up full-fledged campuses in a sprawling, starkly modern district called Education City. The government is courting three more.
For conservative Gulf Arabs, the benefits are obvious: landing degrees from fine universities at home, without exposing children to the liberal temptations -- or perceived anti-Arab hostility -- of the West.
Gulf leaders also see top-notch education as a step toward weaning their economies from the boom and bust of energy prices. After watching their economies scrape bottom during the cheap oil years of the 1990s, leaders are rushing to diversify, and education is part of that effort.
Qatar, home to the US military's Middle East command post and the Al-Jazeera TV network, needs an educated class to lead the fast-developing country. The state's first parliamentary election is expected next year.
''You can't create the environment for democracy, reform and progress without investing in your education system,'' said Hassan al-Ansari, a newspaper editor who heads the Doha-based Gulf Studies Centre. ''It's not cheap. But this is the best investment we can make.''
And it's not just about technical skills. Western universities could capture young minds that otherwise might be influenced by radical Islamists, al-Ansari said.
The schools flocking here are name brands anywhere.
Georgetown University, a Jesuit school in Washington, was persuaded in 2005 to open a branch of its elite School of Foreign Service, alma mater of former President Clinton and his CIA director, George Tenet.
''Here we are, in a fairly conservative Islamic state that said, 'Hey, we want this Catholic Jesuit institution to come and educate our students,'' Georgetown spokesman Charles Nailen said. The school, founded by the Society of Jesus, has posted its crest on its offices here: an American eagle with talons grasping the Cross of Christ.
The first to arrive was Virginia Commonwealth University, which established a college of fine arts in 1997 offering four-year degrees.
The Ivy League's Cornell followed in 2002 by duplicating its Manhattan-based Weil Cornell Medical College in a sleek building with egg-shaped auditoriums. Texas A&M brought its engineering school in 2003. Carnegie Mellon University opened schools of business and computer science in 2004.
Although financial details are confidential, published reports show Qatar's subsidies are nearly irresistible. All expenses, including faculty housing, are paid. Deals are sweetened by donations as large as $50 million (euro37.8 million) to university coffers.
None of the foreign college campuses in Qatar would comment on finances, but Cornell announced in 2001 it would be paid $750 million (euro566 million) over 11 years to operate its Qatar medical school.—AP
