Algonquin hands Jazan campus to British firm
Algonquin College has handed over operation of its money-losing campus in Saudi Arabia to a British company.
Interserve Learning and Employment will now have the task of trying to make the technical college in a rural area of southwest Saudi Arabia profitable. Interserve already operates four technical colleges in the Middle Eastern kingdom, according to its website.
Algonquin’s board of governors decided to pull out of Jazan because the campus was losing money. Losses since Algonquin Jazan opened in 2013 total about $5.8 million. That includes operating losses and the cost of ending the five-year contract. Algonquin has spent $2.95 million for employee and supplier settlements and $250,000 in legal fees to wind down the college, according to a statement on Algonquin’s website.
The Jazan campus was supposed to earn millions in revenue and bolster Algonquin’s reputation as a “global leader” in exporting technical education. But Jazan struggled to educate students who were unprepared to take the courses that Algonquin had been contracted to provide. Many students dropped out, failed to attend classes or flunked.
Critics, including the faculty union, upbraided Algonquin for running a men-only college in a repressive country notorious for human rights abuses.
Premier Kathleen Wynne said it was unacceptable that Ontario colleges operating abroad did not offer programs for women.
An Algonquin staff report says the school believes Jazan students will be able to continue their studies without interruption under the new management.
Gregory Dolezal, one of the instructors who lost his job, said teachers at Algonquin Jazan were making a big difference in the lives of the underprivileged students there. Jazan was a laboratory of teaching methods, classroom management and curriculum as teachers experimented with everything from smaller classes to an emphasis on hands-on learning over lectures, Dolezal said in an interview from Saudi Arabia.
He said some of the students, from hill tribes, were illiterate in their own language. Along with the technical education, Jazan teachers imparted the values of “tolerance, acceptance, respect for diversity, responsibility, independent thinking and self-motivation,” he said.
“It was working. We were making a difference.”
Dolezal, from Georgia, has spent a decade teaching overseas, with stints in Korea and Laos. He arrived at Jazan in 2015, attracted by the prospect of good pay, a new adventure and the chance to experience a new culture.
Dolezal said he signed a contract in June to teach at Algonquin Jazan for the 2016-17 school year. That same month, Algonquin’s board of governors was told that Jazan was on track, and officials were continuing to investigate the possibility of opening a women’s college in Saudi Arabia.
Then on Aug. 10, at an in-camera meeting, Algonquin’s board of directors voted to pull out of Jazan.
Dolezal said he found out by reading the news in the Citizen.
“I was shocked and confused, I didn’t know what would happen next.”
He said he was given three months severance pay.
“When Ottawa pulled the plug, they spilled our hearts.”