Saudi students abroad

Since the earliest group of six Saudi students was sent by King Abdul Aziz to acquire higher education in Cairo in 1927, Saudi Arabia has come very far in terms of outward student mobility at the university level.

The country’s first university was not established until 1957, so for many decades prior to this, and indeed until the current time in certain fields, Saudi students have had no choice but to head overseas for a university education. Both the government and private citizens have been conscious of this need and have committed substantial sums of money – and corresponding amounts of energy and effort – to educating university students overseas.

The Saudi scholarship programme

The most noteworthy aspect of Saudi university students’ outward mobility has been the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Scholarship Program. This has been a multi-million dollar undertaking – and arguably the largest national scholarship programme worldwide.

Launched by the late King Abdullah in 2005, this programme formalised the longstanding and already active outward flow of Saudi students to universities worldwide. It aimed to send 50,000 Saudi men and women to higher education institutions overseas. Renewed with the subsequent five-year Saudi development plan in 2010, it has to date educated a far greater number of citizens than was earlier envisioned.

The most recent timeframe for which the Saudi government has made numbers publicly available is the Saudi statistical yearbook from the Hijri year 1433–1434, corresponding to the academic year 2012-13. These include statistics for general demographics, health, social services, transportation, communications, water, energy, the labour market and so on.

A substantial section deals with education, within which higher education, both inside and outside the country, is addressed. In total, for the academic year 2012-13, almost 200,000 Saudi students were overseas to acquire higher education (199,285 to be exact). Of these, a staggering 165,908 were funded by government scholarships, with the rest being privately funded.

Saudi female students abroad

The yearbook provides statistics for both males and females. One of the most remarkable things about the breakdown of students by gender is the substantial proportion of Saudi students studying abroad who are female (150,109 males and 49,176 females – roughly a 3:1 ratio).

It is a testament to the Kingdom’s commitment to education for women that the programme sponsors an accompanying male relative for every Saudi female awarded a scholarship. The Saudi cultural bureaux and missions in the host countries provide orientation and assistance to these citizens at every stage of the educational process.

This has been a creative way to ensure that Saudi females can receive the same world-class education as their male counterparts, without ruffling religious feathers or upending the status quo. The cultural and social expectations of Saudi females are thus upheld, while they avail themselves of world-class educational opportunities.

Breakdown by destination country

Saudi students travel to more familiar systems such as the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia – but also to continental European countries, such as the Netherlands, Germany and Italy and indeed many countries in Asia, such as China, India, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea and Japan.

In addition, there is a substantial number of Saudi students studying in other Arab countries, such as Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan.

The overwhelming majority of students predictably head to English-speaking countries, with the United States being the single host country with the largest influx of Saudi students at any given time, with Britain following close behind.

Breakdown by field of study

Writing in 2009, the Undersecretary for Scholarships at the then Ministry of Higher Education, Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al-Mousa, reflected on the purpose of Saudi scholarships to foreign universities being to “train and develop Saudi human resources with the aim of enabling them to become competitive in the labour market and scientific research and provide key support to public and private Saudi universities”.

This has been ensured, according to him, by highlighting fields critical for the country’s economic development and encouraging Saudi students to undertake programmes of study within them. Consequently, the Saudi government encourages scholarships in medical or health and engineering sciences, followed by information and communication, computer science and basic sciences.

Business studies – in subjects such as accounting, management, finance, e-commerce, insurance, marketing and regulatory law – are also encouraged. However, this field is favoured more by self-funded students coming from entrepreneurial and industrial backgrounds.

Therefore, when viewed by subject breakdown, the largest single field of study turns out to be business and management – with engineering and related sciences following close behind. The third predominant field of study is medical and health-related sciences, with the fourth being informatics.

Quite surprisingly, more than 7,000 Saudi students were enrolled in humanities subjects in 2012-13, another 3,644 in the social sciences and 1,496 in the arts. However, a deplorably low number undertook teacher training (a mere 1,899), which could be a contributing factor to why the overall quality of teaching in the Saudi state educational system has been slow to improve.

On the other hand, though low, enrolments in environmental protection studies, agriculture, forestry, fish farming, productivity and manufacturing industry studies, science education and press and media studies, indicate important steps in the right direction for the Kingdom.

Breakdown by academic level

Within higher education, Saudi students abroad are clustered for the most part at the bachelor degree level (60%). Some 24% are studying for their masters degrees and another 5% towards their doctorate.

Of the total number of scholarship recipients, the government sponsors a substantial proportion (8%) for fellowships and other advanced professional training. The remaining take up studies for associate degrees, intermediate and higher diplomas and other training programmes.

Implications of outward student mobility

The social and cultural impact of this massive student movement outward is quite clearly evident to any resident of the Kingdom.

Briefly, the country has changed and is changing rapidly as a result of this internationalisation of higher education. It has seen a sharp increase in entrepreneurship, new ideas and new institutions of all sorts, as Saudi students return to their home country. Workforce localisation is slowly taking place and Saudi citizens are on track to gradually replace the expatriate professional labour force.

However, much depends on the continuation of the scholarship programme in the years to come. With the passing of King Abdullah and the merger of the ministries of education and higher education by King Salman, it remains to be seen whether the programme will continue in its current form or be subsumed into new priorities and ultimately new realities for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Manail Anis Ahmed is an international higher education management professional with experience working with institutions in the United States, South Asia and the Middle East. She is the head of global resource development for Habib University, a private liberal arts university in Karachi, Pakistan. E-mail: manailahmed@gmail.com. This article was first published in the current edition of International Higher Education.