State of Qatar Sheikh Khalifa bin Hamad AlThani. Now, a number of expatriate communities have their own schools and having their own educational syllabus, however, these schools are operated under the guidelines of Ministry of Education of Qatar. Universities The first university established in the country was Qatar University, founded as a teachers' college in 1973. It currently has eight colleges, including Education, Business and Economics, Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Sharia, Pharmacy, Law, and Medicine. Several universities from other countries have opened satellite campuses in the country. For example, some American universities have campuses at Education City. These include Cornell University, Weill Medical College, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgetown University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Northwestern University in Qatar and Texas A&M University. Universities from Canada include College of the North Atlantic-Qatar and the University of Calgary-Qatar. There is a branch of Dutch Stenden University in Qatar. HEC Paris was the first European partner to join Education City. University College London is the first British university to have opened a campus in Qatar. On top of that, Qatar Faculty of Islamic Studies is the graduate school and international center of excellence in Islamic Studies that is under the umbrella of Hamad Bin Khalifa University and attached to Qatar Foundation. Educational initiatives The Qatari government has taken a unique approach to education through AL-Bairaq, an outreach program targeting high school students which focuses on a curriculum that is based on STEM fields. The idea behind AL-Bairaq is to offer high school students the opportunity to connect with the research environment in the Center for Advanced Materials (CAM) at Qatar University. In 2009, the government launched the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), a global forum that brings together education stakeholders, opinion leaders and decision makers from all over the world to discuss educational issues. The first edition was held in Doha in November 2009. WISE has been involved in fundraising efforts for Haiti in an attempt to help rebuild the country's education system which suffered as a result of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Additionally, WISE has created a Nobel-equivalent prize for education, with a $500,000 award for its recipient. See also Education in the Arab World References Bibliography External links Short courses for professionals in Qatar | Laimoon.com Supreme Education Council – "Education for a New Era" Arabic Qatar Visitor – List of private schools in Qatar Education in Qatar Homeschooling in Qatar Links