Saudis return in record numbers to US universities
Saudi Gazette - 14 November, 2006
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Saudi students studying in the US have achieved a record figure as their
number has reached 11,000 after several years that witnessed a drop in their
numbers following the September 11 attacks, Asharq Al-Awsat, the
London-based Arabic-language daily reported Sunday.

These include 1,653 Saudi girls who got scholarships to study in America.

The increase came as a result of the measures taken by the Saudi and
American authorities, including the Saudi government's huge scholarship
program to enable Saudi students to study abroad.

The program began last year, along with easing in the issue of student visas
from the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia.

The education initiative also includes another scholarship program to enable
American students to study in Saudi Arabia.

"The relations at the government level are strong but at the people's level
there is a lot of mistrust and hatred. This scholarship program is a good
step towards eradicating some of the mistrust and hatred," Gregory Gus III,
a professor at Vermont University and a specialist on Saudi affairs was
quoted as saying by the newspaper.

Mazyad Ibrahim Al-Mazyad, the Saudi Cultural Attaché said 10,936 Saudi
students have been registered in 733 education institutions throughout the
United States. He said 3,000 other Saudi students are expected to arrive in
the new semester. This means their number will reach 14,000 students.
Virginia occupies the fourth position after California, Florida and Colorado
as a favored destination for Saudi students seeking study at US
universities. There are 736 Saudi students at universities in the state of
Virginia.

The number of Saudi students now exceeds the number of students in the
academic year 1980/1981, as their number then reached 10,440 according to
the International Education Institution in New York, a non-profit
organization working with the US State Department. Also, the current figure
is double the number of Saudi students in the US in September 2001 when then
stood at 5,579.

Prince Turki Al-Faisal, the Kingdom's ambassador to the US, said joint
education efforts began to increase following the April 2005 meeting between
King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, who was
Crown Prince then, and US President George Bush in Crawford, Texas.

However, according to an official at the US State Department, Saudi students
started arriving in large numbers to study in the US in the late 1970's.
After 1981, their numbers started to dwindle down as more students were
admitted at the Saudi universities and the Saudi government began to focus
less on getting international experience.

In 2001, bilateral relations were negatively affected to the terrorist
attacks in 2001. For several months after the attacks, no Saudi national was
granted a student visa.

Mazyad said in the following year a limited number got visas. According to
the International Education Institute, the number of Saudi students dropped
by 25.2 percent in the academic year 2002/2003.

With the advent of the academic year 2004/2005, the number of Saudi students
reached 3,035. This low figure was never reached since the seventies.

According to the State Department, 9,471 Saudi nationals received student
visas in the academic year ending Sept. 30. This is a 297 percent increase
compared to the number of visas issued in the previous year reaching 2,383.