[27]Degrees awarded by Northwestern University's Qatar campus are accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

Predock traveled around the world, deriving inspiration from desert structures to give NU-Q's new building a look and feel appropriate to Qatar's culture, climate, and location.

Located on the NU-Q campus, the bilingual (Arabic and English) museum features interactive exhibitions, discussion programs, and other projects examining media, journalism, and communication through global, regional, and local/Qatar lenses.

One NU-Q graduate was nominated for a student academy award for his film 100 Steps, which tells the story of a young boy in Pakistan who finds that his local religious school has served as a front for a radical extremists’ recruitment camp.

[48] Convict of 302, a documentary by two NU-Q students about Pakistan's death penalty and anti-terrorism laws, screened at a consortium sponsored by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in Washington, DC.

[49] Students have also written stories about working conditions at local development sites in Qatar, domestic abuse,[50] and women's issues.

Assignments have included the Financial Times, National Geographic, Huffington Post, Grayling Public Relations, Qatar Foundation International, and Vogue.

Northwestern undergrads studying at School of Communication, Medill, and Weinberg are eligible to apply and participate in the program, which takes place during NU-Q's Fall Semester (usually late August-early December).

The goal of the trips are to connect students to the needs of the larger worldwide community, provide insight and understanding of the historical and socio-political context of the visited country, and build a strong sense of global citizenship and commitment.

Trip destinations have included Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Brazil, China, India, Morocco, South Africa, Tunisia, Zambia, and more.

GME aims to create a platform where students can network and sharpen their employability skills and explore the regional job market.

The founding Dean & CEO of NU-Q was Dr. John Margolis, an associate provost at Northwestern University who served from 2008 to 2011,[54][55] who was succeeded by Dr. Everette E. Dennis from 2011 to 2020.

[57] The collections of the professionally staffed NU-Q library focus on media issues, and students and faculty also have access to all electronic resources available at the Northwestern University Evanston campus and to the services of inter-library loan.

This leaves these professors answerable to the Dean & CEO of NU-Q, a situation that is not dissimilar to faculty members at Northwestern's Evanston Campus.

In Qatar, however, a report by Stephen Eiesenman, former President of Northwestern Faculty Senate, pointed out that the Dean has much more authority than in the United States.

[29] Many professors at Doha campuses of U.S. universities are incentivized to trade in their teaching positions in the U.S. for ones in Qatar with a salary premium, housing arrangements and research funding.

[60] In addition to its core mission of providing undergraduate education to its students, NU-Q seeks to serve as a regional center for issues related to communication and journalism.

[61] Often in collaboration with local, regional, or international organizations, NU-Q sponsors seminars and colloquia on topics related to the media.

[63] Outside of the NU-Q and Education City communities, freedom of speech is highly limited and anyone who threatened “social values” or Qatar's “general order” through any forms of news, photos, videos or audio recordings can be sentenced to prison.

[68] Northwestern University has come under fire for opening a campus in Qatar for various reasons including the country's poor human rights record, which was particularly scrutinized in the years leading up to the 2022 World Cup.

[69] According to a UNHCR assessment from March 2022, Qatar had undergone significant legal and institutional changes to reinforce its human rights protections.

[28] Everette Dennis, the former dean of NU-Q, led a six-nation survey in 2015 that was financed by the Qatar National Research Fund and asked questions such as if people think their country is "headed in the right direction".