PBS NOW: EDUCATION CITY

NOW on PBS explores how the oil rich nation of Qatar is importing top-notch American education at a cost of billions of dollars in a fascinating segment titled, “Education City”.

Part 1 (9:33)
 

Part 2 (9:48)
 

Part 3 (4:53)

DISCLOSURE: The producer of the segment is a relative.

Technorati Tags: Brenda Breslauer, David Brancaccio, Education, Georgetown, middle east, NOW, PBS, Mona Iskander

Comments

[99]

Alan!!!!!

My mind is blown.

This freaks me out. It would take a couple hundred pages to explain.

WHAT MECHANISM IS IN PLACE TO TAKE CARE OF THE PEOPLE ALL OVER THE WORLD WHOSE LIVELIHOODS HAVE BEEN, ARE BEING AND WILL BE SUPPLANTED BY GLOBALIZATION?

The part we need to work out first is being completely ignored.

[HPM]

there is no doubt that this raises a TON of questions but my overall take away from it was positive. am i wrong?

[99]

I can see how one could have a positive take on it, but it's still creepin' me out. It has too much to do with insane amounts of money. We pitch fits about their kind of governance and their treatment of women, etc., and make other Islamic countries pay dearly for our disapprobation.... It seems to me that our places of higher learning are shifting to where the money is. It scares me because I see everything shifting to global mode, and that could only EVER be good if there were some sort of mechanism in place to protect workers. [And soon maybe students too.] There is not. It simply means mega-corporations moving jobs to ever cheaper markets. People who want to feed their families will have to cross the globe... like Hispanics have to cross our border now... only it will be everybody, everywhere. A completely feudalized earth. I don't like it.

[HPM]

i don't disagree with anything you wrote BUT here is my question: what does qatar do with all that money if not import higher education? now unless the answer to that question is open up soup kitchens across the planet to feed the homeless, which somehow i doubt, i still think it's probably a good thing. in the end, more educated people is better for everyone. this is especially so in the middle east. and double so for women in the middle east.

hey, like you i think this raises a million questions many of which you write about above. and there is no question that there is at least the appearance of selling off education to the highest bidder. and if half the students come from the tiny country of qatar that almost necessarily means the students are not on par with the student bodies of the participating universities. and if it is only for the elite who grew up with drivers that certainly devalues the program.

yet, because of the one question i ask above my takeaway is still positive. there are few, if any, things where money can be better spent.

[99]

Right! That is the good part... spending money on a good thing, but that goodness factor is washing out, for me, with the furthering of the higher education for the elite thing that exists here, and is worsening, AND that this will end up taking professional jobs away from those who have them now... things Qatar may rightfully wish to do for themselves that are being done by others for them now, but also jobs held by Americans in the Middle East that Qataris will do for less, or with less overhead. And it isn't about whose jobs are being taken; it's about the supplanting of one population by another in the job market. It's the trending of the middle class down into the serf class that is accomplished by globalizing all this stuff, WITHOUT mechanisms in place to make sure this isn't impoverishing and killing the people in the wake of this great advancement that is snaking across the globe.

Indians are now able to buy food that used to go to food banks here because of the jobs we exported to India... so the hungry here are getting hungrier. Nice that starving Indians get to eat now, but is TAKING TURNS starving the right way to advance into this millennium?

The Chinese are going car-crazy with their money from the jobs we used to have here. They already have more English speakers than we have in the United States and more honors students than we have students, and that damn surplus of food has turned into a bad shortage if not yet outright famine. Again, is TAKING TURNS polluting and consuming "progress"?

So this Qatar thing is looking as though it's bound to shave off more of our already too skinny middle class. Those holding on to it by their fingernails now going down into needing food [and shelter] that isn't there....

I'm stuck out here in Big Picture Land... and I want a slot at the next Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting so I can yell bloody murder....

I've always loved the idea of One World Government -- no more fighting with each other -- but you just can't have it in a world that does not both put DECENT AND HUMANE population control and safety net mechanisms in place. At least with these damn old fashioned borders and trade laws each country had a prayer of maintaining a standard of living for their own, but that is almost completely erased, and some countries are not in the business of maintaining any quality of life for their own at all anymore. Further, what countries like this do to the ones who ARE still taking care of their own is provide a constant drag on those capabilities. It's a great sucking vortex that looks superficially like progress.

I so need to swing from some earlobes... Bill's... Oprah's.... And, heck, I was hoping to avoid having to do a post about this stuff, but... well... I might not be able to shut up about it....

[HPM]

i don't think the qatar education city will take away any jobs from americans. it doesn't take away education slots for americans and i doubt the number of people graduating will have any noticeable impact on our job market. again, i am not saying that there are not big question marks with this program. only that i still think the good probably outweighs the bad.

but great minds can disagree... and so can ours (:

[99]

Well, they'll for sure get all the jobs at Halliburton and all or most of the jobs with the Houston firms moving there to elude sanction or world censure for their dirty dealings in Burma and elsewhere, and, heck, lort only knows how many others.... It's in stone that there are a monster lot of companies with their fingers in global pies that are finding it more prudent to base themselves in Qatar. On the one hand, good riddance, but like I say, on the other, yeesh, it could hurt like holy heck. Geologists, engineers, MBAs, all kinda jobs presently held by Americans shifting rather swiftly to Qataris.... I hope we don't feel it because of all the alternative energy jobs opening up here, but....

[99]

And, this illustrates the corporate mentality that is fueling my concern here....

[99]

Woke up in the middle of the night saying, "I mean DUBAI...." :-P