The Vice President of Bose Corporation discusses their innovative audio technology products and systemsJames Scammon, vice president of Asia Pacific for Bose Corporation with responsibilities’ in the Middle East and African markets, recently visited Doha to open the first Bose store at Lagoona Mall. Erika Widén reports further about Bose Corporation and why they remain the global leader in audio innovative technology products.

Technological Audio

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TheEDGE72

The Vice President of Bose Corporation discusses their innovative audio technology products and systemsJames Scammon, vice president of Asia Pacific for Bose Corporation with responsibilities’ in the Middle East and African markets, recently visited Doha to open the first Bose store at Lagoona Mall. Erika Widén reports further about Bose Corporation and why they remain the global leader in audio innovative technology products.

Technological Audio

BUSINESSINSIGHT

TheEDGE72

will be able to appreciate the fatigue that is imposed on a person by the whole effort of cutting out unwanted noise, and concentrating on getting work or even trying to sleep on a long flight. The QuietComfort headsets listens to these unwanted sounds and cancels them out, allowing for silence around the ears or just pure music to come through.

While the QuietComfort technology, said Scammon, works on great noise cancellation, another innovation used by Bose is the ProprietaryTriport technology that ensures great bass response along with high quality audio from the headphones without the need for an external bass booster. The performance and the sound is so clear that customers often compare the experience to listening to music on a stereo system.

During the recent launch at Lagoona Mall, Bose Corporation introduced to Doha its latest home theatre module, The VideoWave Entertainment System. “Bose VideoWave is our first foray into marrying great video with outstanding audio performance,” said Scammon, “the visualisation of our research engineers was to create a television that had the home theatre built into it without adding components to the television, and that is just what they achieved with the Bose VideoWave. In fact the Complex.com in the United States said that this is the best sounding TV ever.” The Bose VideoWave has a complete sound system built behind the screen that promises a room filling rich experience for the viewer, hearing an amazing low note performance without an external bass module, clear highs, a room filling sound that seems to come from a sound stage much wider than the size of the screen. Scammon added that the final point is their innovative Clickpad that has redefined how easy and intuitive a remote can be.

This remote, while holding just the essential functions, allows users to navigate through the controls without leaving the action on the screen. Also those controls appear on the screen that are relevant to the source while watching, making it easy to use and navigate.

The vision of Bose Corporation is for more people across the globe to receive the Bose innovative technology experience, added Scammon, including the Middle East and of course Qatar.

TheEDGE 73

BUSINESSINSIGHT

“Our focus has been to fund our research to enable us to bring new and the best in class products to market.”

According to James Scammon, vice president of Asia Pacific for Bose Corportation, “Dr. Amar Bose founded Bose in the United States (US) 1964. Dr.

Bose started the company with one key objective to get products to market that make people’s lives better. Our focus has been to fund our research to enable us to bring new and the best in class products to market. This in turn has fuelled our growth and development since then.” Scammon goes onto quote Bose in an interview in 2007 regardomg an early review that has kept Bose Corporation alive untill today. ‘“One magazine in the US, a really credible magazine, had a reviewer named Norman Eisenburg who really knew his music,” said Dr Bose. “In those days I used to take the loudspeaker to the reviewer. I packed my son and loudspeaker in the car and went off. I put this little thing on top of the big speakers he had, turned it on, and within five minutes he said: ‘I don’t care if this is made of green cheese, it’s the best sound, most accurate sound, I’ve ever heard.’ “He came out with a review titled ‘Surround and Conquer’. He was not known to do things like that. Everybody in the press knew he knew music and it resulted in rave reviews one after another, and we were able to survive.” In 1993, said Scammon, Dr. Bose opened his first store in Kittery, Maine. Since then the company has expanded more than 160 stores around the US and a large number worldwide. Dr. Bose, while a graduate student eight years before he launched Bose Corporation was disappointed with a high-end stereo system he had purchased. He then conducted an intensive research aimed at clarifying factors, which he found as fundamental weaknesses – plaguing quality audio systems. The main weakness was that the design of the electronics and speakers failed the spatial properties of radiated sound in homes and apartments. When he began his own company, his mission was to achieve ‘ Better Sound Through Research’ which has remained untill today the company’s slogan.

Bose products are not new to the Qatari market. Darwish Holding has a 20-year partnership with Bose Corporation and are the sole distributor of Bose audio products, which have been available to the local market since then. “As our association has strengthened, so has the connection of people in Qatar with the brand Bose,” said Scammon. “It seemed the right next step to have an exclusive showroom

that could get all offerings from Bose for the home under one roof. This will help us not only offer people of Qatar a wider variety but an overall better experience.”

Recently Bose Corporation opened their first store situated in the high-end shopping centre, Lagoona Mall. Bose products are available throughout the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) through a network of distributors. While Bose products are present in Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Oman, only a few exclusive Bose stores are available in a few cities of these Arabian states.

Bose products are best known to deliver loudspeakers, noise-cancelling headsets and automotive sound systems.

“We are focused on delivering quality audio no matter what our offering may be. Our products come with three attributes that act as a signature for them, great audio performance, simple to use and elegant design that blends into your home,” said Scammon, “All systems use Bose proprietary technologies making them unique in the market. No matter what size of the system it promises to deliver a quality sound as close as possible to how the artist intended it to be reproduced.”

In Qatar the Bose exclusive store will be offering all products for domestic use, which includes home theatre systems, music systems, speakers, computer speakers, iPod docking stations and headphones.

According to Scammon, there are several innovative technologies ensuring Bose systems to perform not only well but also easy for the customer to use. One innovative technology of Bose Corporation is the AdaptiQ, which is integrated in all Bose home theatre systems today. AdaptiQ is a smart engineering system that is inside the computer and once it is installed it listens for the speaker placement and room acoustics and calibrates the system to perform optimally in the home space.

Their second innovation, furthered Scammon, is the noise cancellation technology that comes in the active headphones. This was a category that was spearheaded by Bose. People who travel frequently or who work in noisy environments

as the new dean of Georgetown University Qatar, what is your vision for Georgetown University Qatar and future plans?The vision is to pursue excellence in research and teaching, and show relevance and rootedness by engaging with society. By engaging with the other institutions that then leads to initiatives, like thinking about joint certificates with other institutions, like collaborative agreements with Qatar University, like outreach into Qatari Society, and like things that are an expression of values of Georgetown which are not just about pursuing excellence. The whole Georgetown values derive from the Jesuit heritage which is not just about excellence, it is about being the best you can for others. That is really quite explicit, and it is constantly drummed into people here and has been for the last two hundred and seventy something years. That is reflected in an aspect of the student experience at Georgetown, and that is quite unique. It is called Service Learning Trips. They go abroad to a programme called Zones of Peace and explore areas where there has been conflict but there has also been reconstruction going on, reconciliation, and where there are tangible projects to be taken. It is all about not just sitting in your ivory tower with all of your privilege and excellence, but to be part of your local, regional and global society.

The new dean of Georgetown University Qatar speaks about higher education Previously professor of international relations and Middle East politics at Exeter University in the United Kingdom, Gerd Nonneman is now the new dean of Georgetown School of Foreign Service in Qatar. He discussed with TheEDGE his vision and the calibre of Georgetwon graduates that will be entering the workforce soon.

Higher Education

how does Georgetown University differentiate from other universities and what makes the university unique?

As long as you adopt or can see yourself in those wider values of taking care of the person, being the best you can for others and so on, and indeed, develop tolerance of people of different views. That is something that I think is unique to Georgetown and secondly the School of Foreign Service of which we are a branch here, and is certainly unique in Qatar as a liberal arts programme. That is to say that yes they are focused ultimately at becoming global leaders in any field and that may include Foreign Service. They do this by building on a very broad curriculum that is about history, philosophy, economics, language, and anthropology etcetera. All of the students have to go through this, and it is taken very seriously. They get a whole broad skills set before they choose their major. That is why when they come out of here they can become polished diplomats, or government servants. But they can also become journalists, economists, join law firms, and they can go to graduate programmes anywhere in the world. Because of the very broad liberal arts approach you produce a more rounded person. Secondly, that kind of job market is very wide.

what special English programmes do you offer since for the majority of the students English is either their second or third language?

There are no special programmes offered for people who are not very good at English. In fact, you only get in here if you have very high scores in your secondary education but unless you are a native English speaker, you have to put forward a minimum level certificate of ILTS or TEFL at a very high

BUSINESSINSIGHT

TheEDGE74

enough in their GPA to do a semester abroad. So we encourage them to go and study abroad even if they are based here.

Of the one third of Qatari students registered at Georgetown University Qatar, are the majority girls? does this mean that boys prefer to receive a higher education abroad?

Yes, and there are several explanations. Boys in the Gulf as a whole are under-represented in universities. One because they, with fantastic exceptions – perform at much lower level than the girls if you take them as a group. They are less motivated but also the families find it less problematic to have their sons go study abroad than the girls. It is a combination of these elements that explains why boys are under- represented in university education in the Gulf.

you have a number of publications in regards to political viewpoints. Could you give TheEdGE an insight of the current research that you are doing now?One project is a kind of collection of the best work that has been published over the last thirty years or so on Arab democratisation and authoritarianism, which should appear later this year with an introductory essay by myself. Another is a similar kind of collection on the international relations of the Middle East. I am currently finalising the Arabic updated edition of a book I produced with a colleague on Saudi Arabia – covering the politics, economics and society in Saudi Arabia. In the longer run I hope to return to a project, but this is not going to be for another couple of years, on the foreign policies of the Gulf States. On a separate track, one of the things that I remain very closely involved in is a Journal of Arabian studies. It is the only scholarly journal on the region anywhere really. It is a proper, international peer reviewed journal and I am the associate editor of that, and in fact Georgetown is going to co-produce it with the University of Exeter in the UK, which has the only centre for Gulf studies in the world, and where I was previously based.

TheEDGE 75

BUSINESSINSIGHT

“The new Qatari graduates will know aspects of law, microeconomics and macroeconomics, and be truly proficient in an extra language as it is also a requirement.”

level. In fact, the required level here is higher than in some good universities in the United Kingdom (UK) or in the United States – in order to make sure that they can actually cope with a very demanding programme. You don’t want to bring people in just hoping that they will somehow get by. Because it is tough and there is a lot of reading, discussion, writing, and academic skills are necessary. Now, what we do, and that is not just for people who don’t have English as a native language, we run a very impressive academic service operation. This includes professionals in English for academic purposes, academic skills – all kinds of generic skills, but it would also include specific tuition in certain subjects like economics. Economics can be very hard and every student has to take microeconomics even if they don’t go on to do a major in international economics. So there are people, including students and advanced students who help others through the difficult bits. They get extra tuition to help them through. So we do have that sort of general help available for students. It is not so much the language that is a problem once they come in, the problem is that some students who are educated in Qatar at secondary level are with a few exceptions– not always as well prepared for top level critical reading, critical analysis, large volumes of reading and integrating that material into large writing assignments. Those things are not always what secondary education in Qatar prepares people best for, so they might be exceptionally bright, have incredible qualities and a skill set, but you have to make sure that you have the apparatus in place to take them through those little hurdles. By year two or three, and certainly by the end of year four, they perform at the highest level globally.

what is your perspective in regards to media freedom in Qatar? and do you feel that freedom of speech is more open here in comparison to other places in the Gulf Cooperation Council?

I think that this is a work in progress. When you talk about media you have to divide print media and visual media. Print media, I would say that Qatar is just about running with the pack in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) because within the GCC there is an increased opening, much less so in Oman, but Saudi newspapers tackle very tricky subjects, Kuwaiti newspapers have done so for a long time. Qatar is moving with the pack in the television and broadcast media. Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic show Qatar well

ahead of the pack so if you take the print media out of the picture then you could say that Qatar is really ahead of the other Gulf countries.

how prepared are Georgetown graduates once they enter the work force whether it will be in Qatar or in the Gulf region?

No graduate is ever fully prepared for the work force. There is always a good deal of on the job training, but I would say that our graduates are better prepared than virtually any that I know of because of that level of training that they have had through the broad liberal arts programme. They will know aspects of law, microeconomics and macroeconomics, and be truly proficient in an extra language, as it is also a requirement. They will have a broad historical background. They would have studied politics, done exercises in critical analysis of problems, practiced debating, and even putting forward views that are not their own. They come out at the end with a skill set, a level of confidence in engaging that prepares them exceptionally well and the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If you look at the statistics of where our students go and whether they get jobs, we score better than any other institution in Qatar. I think we are in the high 90 percent of people getting jobs. It is only very occasionally a graduate hasn’t got a job within six months or after a year. The distribution shows that they are really going everywhere, the government and private sectors, oil and gas, higher education, law etcetera.

do Qatari students prefer to study in their home country or do they prefer to go abroad?

It is hard to put down a general rule. There are some who clearly prefer to study abroad if they can, because it is a different experience. There are some though that like to stay close to their families and of course some of the students would like to study abroad, but their families won’t allow them. It is a mixed picture, but what we do is with the students that come here, we try and give them a particular version of the Georgetown experience –but we also encourage the ones who are scoring high

will be able to appreciate the fatigue that is imposed on a person by the whole effort of cutting out unwanted noise, and concentrating on getting work or even trying to sleep on a long flight. The QuietComfort headsets listens to these unwanted sounds and cancels them out, allowing for silence around the ears or just pure music to come through.

While the QuietComfort technology, said Scammon, works on great noise cancellation, another innovation used by Bose is the ProprietaryTriport technology that ensures great bass response along with high quality audio from the headphones without the need for an external bass booster. The performance and the sound is so clear that customers often compare the experience to listening to music on a stereo system.

During the recent launch at Lagoona Mall, Bose Corporation introduced to Doha its latest home theatre module, The VideoWave Entertainment System. “Bose VideoWave is our first foray into marrying great video with outstanding audio performance,” said Scammon, “the visualisation of our research engineers was to create a television that had the home theatre built into it without adding components to the television, and that is just what they achieved with the Bose VideoWave. In fact the Complex.com in the United States said that this is the best sounding TV ever.” The Bose VideoWave has a complete sound system built behind the screen that promises a room filling rich experience for the viewer, hearing an amazing low note performance without an external bass module, clear highs, a room filling sound that seems to come from a sound stage much wider than the size of the screen. Scammon added that the final point is their innovative Clickpad that has redefined how easy and intuitive a remote can be.

This remote, while holding just the essential functions, allows users to navigate through the controls without leaving the action on the screen. Also those controls appear on the screen that are relevant to the source while watching, making it easy to use and navigate.

The vision of Bose Corporation is for more people across the globe to receive the Bose innovative technology experience, added Scammon, including the Middle East and of course Qatar.

TheEDGE 73

BUSINESSINSIGHT

“Our focus has been to fund our research to enable us to bring new and the best in class products to market.”

According to James Scammon, vice president of Asia Pacific for Bose Corportation, “Dr. Amar Bose founded Bose in the United States (US) 1964. Dr.

Bose started the company with one key objective to get products to market that make people’s lives better. Our focus has been to fund our research to enable us to bring new and the best in class products to market. This in turn has fuelled our growth and development since then.” Scammon goes onto quote Bose in an interview in 2007 regardomg an early review that has kept Bose Corporation alive untill today. ‘“One magazine in the US, a really credible magazine, had a reviewer named Norman Eisenburg who really knew his music,” said Dr Bose. “In those days I used to take the loudspeaker to the reviewer. I packed my son and loudspeaker in the car and went off. I put this little thing on top of the big speakers he had, turned it on, and within five minutes he said: ‘I don’t care if this is made of green cheese, it’s the best sound, most accurate sound, I’ve ever heard.’ “He came out with a review titled ‘Surround and Conquer’. He was not known to do things like that. Everybody in the press knew he knew music and it resulted in rave reviews one after another, and we were able to survive.” In 1993, said Scammon, Dr. Bose opened his first store in Kittery, Maine. Since then the company has expanded more than 160 stores around the US and a large number worldwide. Dr. Bose, while a graduate student eight years before he launched Bose Corporation was disappointed with a high-end stereo system he had purchased. He then conducted an intensive research aimed at clarifying factors, which he found as fundamental weaknesses – plaguing quality audio systems. The main weakness was that the design of the electronics and speakers failed the spatial properties of radiated sound in homes and apartments. When he began his own company, his mission was to achieve ‘ Better Sound Through Research’ which has remained untill today the company’s slogan.

Bose products are not new to the Qatari market. Darwish Holding has a 20-year partnership with Bose Corporation and are the sole distributor of Bose audio products, which have been available to the local market since then. “As our association has strengthened, so has the connection of people in Qatar with the brand Bose,” said Scammon. “It seemed the right next step to have an exclusive showroom

that could get all offerings from Bose for the home under one roof. This will help us not only offer people of Qatar a wider variety but an overall better experience.”

Recently Bose Corporation opened their first store situated in the high-end shopping centre, Lagoona Mall. Bose products are available throughout the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) through a network of distributors. While Bose products are present in Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Oman, only a few exclusive Bose stores are available in a few cities of these Arabian states.

Bose products are best known to deliver loudspeakers, noise-cancelling headsets and automotive sound systems.

“We are focused on delivering quality audio no matter what our offering may be. Our products come with three attributes that act as a signature for them, great audio performance, simple to use and elegant design that blends into your home,” said Scammon, “All systems use Bose proprietary technologies making them unique in the market. No matter what size of the system it promises to deliver a quality sound as close as possible to how the artist intended it to be reproduced.”

In Qatar the Bose exclusive store will be offering all products for domestic use, which includes home theatre systems, music systems, speakers, computer speakers, iPod docking stations and headphones.

According to Scammon, there are several innovative technologies ensuring Bose systems to perform not only well but also easy for the customer to use. One innovative technology of Bose Corporation is the AdaptiQ, which is integrated in all Bose home theatre systems today. AdaptiQ is a smart engineering system that is inside the computer and once it is installed it listens for the speaker placement and room acoustics and calibrates the system to perform optimally in the home space.

Their second innovation, furthered Scammon, is the noise cancellation technology that comes in the active headphones. This was a category that was spearheaded by Bose. People who travel frequently or who work in noisy environments

as the new dean of Georgetown University Qatar, what is your vision for Georgetown University Qatar and future plans?The vision is to pursue excellence in research and teaching, and show relevance and rootedness by engaging with society. By engaging with the other institutions that then leads to initiatives, like thinking about joint certificates with other institutions, like collaborative agreements with Qatar University, like outreach into Qatari Society, and like things that are an expression of values of Georgetown which are not just about pursuing excellence. The whole Georgetown values derive from the Jesuit heritage which is not just about excellence, it is about being the best you can for others. That is really quite explicit, and it is constantly drummed into people here and has been for the last two hundred and seventy something years. That is reflected in an aspect of the student experience at Georgetown, and that is quite unique. It is called Service Learning Trips. They go abroad to a programme called Zones of Peace and explore areas where there has been conflict but there has also been reconstruction going on, reconciliation, and where there are tangible projects to be taken. It is all about not just sitting in your ivory tower with all of your privilege and excellence, but to be part of your local, regional and global society.

The new dean of Georgetown University Qatar speaks about higher education Previously professor of international relations and Middle East politics at Exeter University in the United Kingdom, Gerd Nonneman is now the new dean of Georgetown School of Foreign Service in Qatar. He discussed with TheEDGE his vision and the calibre of Georgetwon graduates that will be entering the workforce soon.

Higher Education

how does Georgetown University differentiate from other universities and what makes the university unique?

As long as you adopt or can see yourself in those wider values of taking care of the person, being the best you can for others and so on, and indeed, develop tolerance of people of different views. That is something that I think is unique to Georgetown and secondly the School of Foreign Service of which we are a branch here, and is certainly unique in Qatar as a liberal arts programme. That is to say that yes they are focused ultimately at becoming global leaders in any field and that may include Foreign Service. They do this by building on a very broad curriculum that is about history, philosophy, economics, language, and anthropology etcetera. All of the students have to go through this, and it is taken very seriously. They get a whole broad skills set before they choose their major. That is why when they come out of here they can become polished diplomats, or government servants. But they can also become journalists, economists, join law firms, and they can go to graduate programmes anywhere in the world. Because of the very broad liberal arts approach you produce a more rounded person. Secondly, that kind of job market is very wide.

what special English programmes do you offer since for the majority of the students English is either their second or third language?

There are no special programmes offered for people who are not very good at English. In fact, you only get in here if you have very high scores in your secondary education but unless you are a native English speaker, you have to put forward a minimum level certificate of ILTS or TEFL at a very high

BUSINESSINSIGHT

TheEDGE74

enough in their GPA to do a semester abroad. So we encourage them to go and study abroad even if they are based here.

Of the one third of Qatari students registered at Georgetown University Qatar, are the majority girls? does this mean that boys prefer to receive a higher education abroad?

Yes, and there are several explanations. Boys in the Gulf as a whole are under-represented in universities. One because they, with fantastic exceptions – perform at much lower level than the girls if you take them as a group. They are less motivated but also the families find it less problematic to have their sons go study abroad than the girls. It is a combination of these elements that explains why boys are under- represented in university education in the Gulf.

you have a number of publications in regards to political viewpoints. Could you give TheEdGE an insight of the current research that you are doing now?One project is a kind of collection of the best work that has been published over the last thirty years or so on Arab democratisation and authoritarianism, which should appear later this year with an introductory essay by myself. Another is a similar kind of collection on the international relations of the Middle East. I am currently finalising the Arabic updated edition of a book I produced with a colleague on Saudi Arabia – covering the politics, economics and society in Saudi Arabia. In the longer run I hope to return to a project, but this is not going to be for another couple of years, on the foreign policies of the Gulf States. On a separate track, one of the things that I remain very closely involved in is a Journal of Arabian studies. It is the only scholarly journal on the region anywhere really. It is a proper, international peer reviewed journal and I am the associate editor of that, and in fact Georgetown is going to co-produce it with the University of Exeter in the UK, which has the only centre for Gulf studies in the world, and where I was previously based.

TheEDGE 75

BUSINESSINSIGHT

“The new Qatari graduates will know aspects of law, microeconomics and macroeconomics, and be truly proficient in an extra language as it is also a requirement.”

level. In fact, the required level here is higher than in some good universities in the United Kingdom (UK) or in the United States – in order to make sure that they can actually cope with a very demanding programme. You don’t want to bring people in just hoping that they will somehow get by. Because it is tough and there is a lot of reading, discussion, writing, and academic skills are necessary. Now, what we do, and that is not just for people who don’t have English as a native language, we run a very impressive academic service operation. This includes professionals in English for academic purposes, academic skills – all kinds of generic skills, but it would also include specific tuition in certain subjects like economics. Economics can be very hard and every student has to take microeconomics even if they don’t go on to do a major in international economics. So there are people, including students and advanced students who help others through the difficult bits. They get extra tuition to help them through. So we do have that sort of general help available for students. It is not so much the language that is a problem once they come in, the problem is that some students who are educated in Qatar at secondary level are with a few exceptions– not always as well prepared for top level critical reading, critical analysis, large volumes of reading and integrating that material into large writing assignments. Those things are not always what secondary education in Qatar prepares people best for, so they might be exceptionally bright, have incredible qualities and a skill set, but you have to make sure that you have the apparatus in place to take them through those little hurdles. By year two or three, and certainly by the end of year four, they perform at the highest level globally.

what is your perspective in regards to media freedom in Qatar? and do you feel that freedom of speech is more open here in comparison to other places in the Gulf Cooperation Council?

I think that this is a work in progress. When you talk about media you have to divide print media and visual media. Print media, I would say that Qatar is just about running with the pack in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) because within the GCC there is an increased opening, much less so in Oman, but Saudi newspapers tackle very tricky subjects, Kuwaiti newspapers have done so for a long time. Qatar is moving with the pack in the television and broadcast media. Al Jazeera English and Al Jazeera Arabic show Qatar well

ahead of the pack so if you take the print media out of the picture then you could say that Qatar is really ahead of the other Gulf countries.

how prepared are Georgetown graduates once they enter the work force whether it will be in Qatar or in the Gulf region?

No graduate is ever fully prepared for the work force. There is always a good deal of on the job training, but I would say that our graduates are better prepared than virtually any that I know of because of that level of training that they have had through the broad liberal arts programme. They will know aspects of law, microeconomics and macroeconomics, and be truly proficient in an extra language, as it is also a requirement. They will have a broad historical background. They would have studied politics, done exercises in critical analysis of problems, practiced debating, and even putting forward views that are not their own. They come out at the end with a skill set, a level of confidence in engaging that prepares them exceptionally well and the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If you look at the statistics of where our students go and whether they get jobs, we score better than any other institution in Qatar. I think we are in the high 90 percent of people getting jobs. It is only very occasionally a graduate hasn’t got a job within six months or after a year. The distribution shows that they are really going everywhere, the government and private sectors, oil and gas, higher education, law etcetera.

do Qatari students prefer to study in their home country or do they prefer to go abroad?

It is hard to put down a general rule. There are some who clearly prefer to study abroad if they can, because it is a different experience. There are some though that like to stay close to their families and of course some of the students would like to study abroad, but their families won’t allow them. It is a mixed picture, but what we do is with the students that come here, we try and give them a particular version of the Georgetown experience –but we also encourage the ones who are scoring high