Qatar University’s College of Education (QU-CED) is looking to enrol more male Qatari students, a senior official said.
Currently CED has 90% female students.“The (gender) gap is big and we are coming up with new strategies,” CED dean Dr Ahmed al-Emadi told Gulf Times, hoping the Ministry of Education and Higher Education will consider the proposals they submitted.
One proposal is to lower the retirement age of teachers from 60 to 55. Another is to give some incentives and privileges to teachers and those who will take up teaching as a profession.
“Teaching is more attractive to females than males historically and culturally, even during the College’s inception 40 years ago,” Dr al-Emadi recalled.
Male students, according to the dean, generally tend to explore other career options – from joining the police or military to pursuing engineering and architecture professions – and those which are related to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, popularly known as STEM.
Other male students, he added, also have a notion that their social status is better off with professions other than being a teacher.
CED now has around 2,000 students spread over its different programmes, including primary and secondary, as well as graduate and post-graduate programmes. It also offers diploma in early childhood education.
The dean said they are also planning to open an undergraduate programme in physical education and a PhD in education either in 2017 or the year after. CED mulls re-opening art education, which was closed in 2008. “We try to further develop our programmes and extend new ones that will fit the Qatari society,” he said.
Al-Emadi expressed confidence that CED graduates can get better jobs in Qatar and abroad, including the US due to the quality of education the College provides and its various accreditations.
“Our graduates can apply to any top university in the US,” he noted, citing its five-year accreditation in May by the leading accreditation organisation National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education -  Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation.
“What we are doing here is not different from other places in the world, especially for a relatively young university like QU,” the dean maintained, while describing CED as ‘the only factory in Qatar for producing teachers.’
He also announced that more than seven students from CED are taking their masters and PhD abroad, including from the UK, and some of them will return to Qatar and hopefully join QU.
CED also continues to forge collaborations and agreements with prestigious universities abroad such as the University of Jyväskylä in Finland for educational exchanges. The University of Jyväskylä has its origins in the first Finnish-speaking teacher training college, founded in 1863.