Houston, Texas, is big and hot. Doha, Qatar, is big and hot. The similarities seem to stop there. So why did Houstonian and Qatari education officials team up to create the first community college in Qatar, and how did it work out?
Dave Wilson, a Houston Community College Board of Trustees member, told Watchdog it was a failed moneymaking venture that featured incomplete accounting, anti-Semitism, sexism, and a violation of the Texas Code of Education.
Butch Herod, who was dean of HCC Qatar and the Community College of Qatar, celebrated the partnership as a financially successful “bridging of cultures,” telling Watchdog that it has been attacked based on rumors and misleading reports in the media, although it was not without its challenges.
Who, What, When, Where, Why, How
In 2010, the Houston Community College System signed a five-year contract to work with the Qatar Foundation – under the oversight of the government of Qatar – to establish, administer and help instruct at Qatar’s first community college, CCQ. Since the initial contract expired in 2015, HCC has scaled back and is working on a consulting basis only.
QATAR CLASSROOM: In this October 2011 file photo, students of different nationalities study at the Texas A&M University located in Education City in Doha, Qatar.
The campus is situated in Qatar’s Education City, an extravagant strip of American university satellite campuses in the capital city of Doha that opened in 2003. Today, the Education City is a hub of college life for Qataris, where they can get degrees from U.S institutions such as Northwestern, Georgetown, Texas A&M, Virginia Commonwealth and Cornell – all without ever stepping on American soil. Unlike these institutions, HCC acted as a vendor and not an independent school. The Qatar Foundation shelled out more than $400 million to these schools in 2014 alone, and around $45 million to HCC since 2010.
Qatar has the third highest GDP per capita in the world thanks to its massive supply of oil. However, realizing that an economy relying on a single resource can be problematic, then-Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani founded the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development in 1995. He put his wife Sheikah Moza bint Nasser in charge, with the mission to “support Qatar on its journey from a carbon economy to a knowledge economy by unlocking human potential” through education of its citizens.
Nasser tapped HCC partially because of its reputation as a global community college, with more international students than any other two-year institution. In the fall 2015 semester, 6,540 international students from 146 countries attended HCC.
Money flowing like oil
HCC got into this partnership, at least in part, for economic reasons.
Herod said this was a way to employ 80-plus Texans during the recession – entirely paid by the Qatari government – and to make a little extra money for HCC.
The community college was slated to earn an accounting profit of around $5 million over the life of the contract, although it officially ended up netting about $1.7 million, Teri Zamora, senior vice chancellor of finance and administration at HCC, told Watchdog.
Wilson is not convinced. “I feel certain we lost about $15 million dollars,” he said. Wilson cited administrative costs such as travel and the taxpayer-funded man-hours of pushing through the deal and handling logistics within the United States – expenditures not reimbursed by the Qatar Foundation.
Per the contract, there was a list of costs to be absorbed by the HCCS. These include costs associated with faculty and staff recruitment, credentialing, payroll services, data services, curriculum licensing, overall program development and review, among other costs. It is impossible to know exactly how much of HCC’s money was used on these activities because school financial records do not make distinctions between resources spent on activities in Houston and resources spent on activities for Qatar – especially because many HCC staff split their hours between HCC and CCQ administration.
Herod told Watchdog that the venture returned a profit between $1.2 million and $1.7 million — the half-million dollar range shows the ambiguity of the accounting practices used. Despite that, HCC has been given a clean bill of health for the venture by auditors.
“An external audit of the college is performed annually, and no audit findings in relation to the contract with CCQ were noted by the external auditors during the five years of the contract with CCQ,” said Zamora. An independent audit in 2015 by accounting firm Grant Thornton of HCC found several instances of noncompliance with globally accepted accounting principles, but none specifically in reference to the CCQ partnership (page 127 of this report).
Salaries of administrators and consultants has been another point of contention for Wilson.
However, through an open records request, Watchdog learned that Herod earned between $112,401 and $118,090 per year during his three years running the program, well below the average for a community college dean with a doctoral degree. Gigi Do, executive director of the Office of International Initiatives for HCC, who was instrumental in the launch of the partnership, earned between $105,116 and $110,436 during those years.
Wilson said that two consultants, Chase Untermeyer, ex-Ambassador to Qatar, and Jim Fonteno, son of a former Harris County Commissioner, were each paid $15,000 per month to “interface with the sheikhs.” Herod confirmed their involvement, but told Watchdog the $15,000 per month was split between the consultants.
Cultural collision
Qatar and Texas are night and day. Texas prides itself as a bastion of individual liberty and freedom, whereas Qatar has a track record of civil rights violations, corruption, and censorship.
According to the Times of Israel, Qatar is the 10th most anti-Semitic country in the world. Additionally, Qatar practices Sharia law with strict moral standards for it citizens and enforces a traditional Islamic code for women, including modest dress, separation of genders and severe punishment for drunkenness.
“It got off to a rocky start. They told us they didn’t want any Jewish instructors and they couldn’t have any females,” said Wilson.
Herod told Watchdog he was sent to CCQ to “clean things up” amid bad publicity, acknowledging the difficulties posed by the cultural disparities. However, Herod denies all allegations of institutional anti-Semitism in the hiring process, telling Watchdog that the Qatari officials did not ask staff about their religious affiliations, nor would he have allowed them to discriminate in any case.
“There was no discrimination against Jewish employees. I would not have tolerated it. I would’ve quit,” he said. Herod said the college had at least one Jewish staff member out of the approximately 45 who were sent to Qatar.
But when it came to gender issues, cultural pressures won out over contractual provisions.
When Qatari officials demanded that classes be segregated by sex, HCC administrators capitulated and allowed the separation, which has continued after HCC ended direct participation in the program. Critics claim this is a possible violation of Title IX, which is a federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs that receives federal funding. HCC officials say Title IX was not intended to apply to the operations of U.S. universities in other countries.
Stringent immigration procedures were also a point of contention between HCC faculty and the Qataris.
Getting a work permit in Qatar is an onerous bureaucratic process; all HCC affiliates had to have a flawless criminal record as well as undergo an FBI background check and have chest X-rays and blood tests taken. Staff had to jump through government hoops to leave the country as well.
‘It’s not our mission’
Wilson has been a lone ranger and on many issues, such as HCC’s involvement on the global stage and the CCQ partnership, specifically. “I’ve made a lot of enemies shutting down Qatar,” said Wilson, citing his influence in the school administrators’ decision not to sign a contract extension in 2015.
A primary focus of Wilson’s criticism of the venture comes from a belief that it violates the Texas Education Code role and mission for public junior colleges. Section 130.0011 reads “Texas public junior colleges shall be two-year institutions primarily serving their local taxing districts and service areas in Texas.”
He sees it as a money-grab pushed through by administrators. “It’s not our mission. We’re not here to compete against private industry. … We train plumbers, but that doesn’t mean we should be plumbing contractors,” said Wilson.
In response, Herod points to the statute’s use of “primarily.”
“Houston has always been open to the world,” Herod said.
And apparently it will remain so. HCC officials act as consultants around the world and is looking to expand that role.
“Even though the model has been changed, it should not be taken as an indication we’re exiting the international scene,” HCC Chancellor Cesar Maldonado told the Houston Chronicle. “In fact, we’re looking at expanding our international relationships; it’s just going to be under a different model.”