Catalyzing Regional Influence: The United Arab Emirates’ and Qatar’s Bids for Educational Leadership in the MENA Region through International Education Hubs

Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are amplifying their focus on international education hubs to boost their regional leadership and project soft power in the MENA region.Sensing a propitious geopolitical climate, the two countries aim to enhance their regional influence through education.However, the capacity of education hubs to support the quest for regional leadership can be diminished by entrenchment in conventional organizational design and exposure to sustainability risks.he Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states-Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)-are undergoing transformative change.Inseparable from this change is how these countries envision the role of internationalization in higher education.Nowhere is this role more evident than in the rhetoric regarding international education hubs in Qatar and the UAE.Drawing on policy documents and other forms of textual data from these two countries, our recent study finds a shift of focus from associating education hubs with capacity-building to increasingly associating these institutions with efforts to elevate the two countries' regional impact and ability to project soft power in overlapping geopolitical spheres of influence.Below, we briefly examine this shift of orientation, which could broaden our understanding of the nature of change it is orchestrating, the forces shaping the change, and the dynamic nature of cross-border education.