Posted on 09/11/2006 5:20:45 AM PDT by SJackson
U.S. schools compete for Saudi students - U.S. not yet able do effective background checks on applicants
U.S. schools compete for Saudi students Kingdom gives scholarships to thousands for new exchange program The Associated Press Updated: 5:03 p.m. ET Sept. 9, 2006 www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14743889 MANHATTAN, Kan. - Thousands of students from Saudi Arabia are enrolling on college campuses across the United States this semester under a new educational exchange program brokered by President Bush and Saudi King Abdullah.
The program will quintuple the number of Saudi students and scholars here by the academic year's end. And big, public universities from Florida to the Kansas plains are in a fierce competition for their tuition dollars.
The kingdom's royal family - which is paying full scholarships for most of the 15,000 students - says the program will help stem unrest at home by schooling the country's brightest in the American tradition. The U.S. State Department sees the exchange as a way to build ties with future Saudi leaders and young scholars at a time of unsteady relations with the Muslim world.
Administrators at Kansas State University, an agricultural school surrounded by miles of prairie grass, say the scholarships are a bonanza for public education.
"The Saudi scholarship program has definitely heightened our interest in that part of the world," said Kenneth Holland, associate provost for international programs. "Not only are the students fully funded, but they're also paying out-of-state tuition."
Kansas State has boosted efforts to court Saudi officials in the last year, flying administrators and department heads to the Saudi embassy in Washington. It's paid off: last month about 150 Saudi students started classes there, each funded to the tune of about $31,000.
Saudi to send more students than Mexico
Saudi Embassy spokesman Nail Al-Jubeir said 90 percent of the 10,229 Saudi students the U.S. State Department has registered for the fall semester will also get such scholarships.
By January, U.S. government officials say the program will expand to 15,000 students, which means Saudi Arabia will send more foreign students to the U.S. than Mexico or Turkey. As funding for the scholarship program expands, those numbers are likely to grow.
"This is a critically important bilateral relationship," said Tom Farrell, a deputy assistant secretary for academic programs at the State Department. "It's an opportunity to increase understanding of Saudi Arabia for the United States and of the United States for Saudi Arabia."
College administrators say common misperceptions about the oil-rich nation make it crucial to create a tolerant environment for Arab and Muslim students, who have been singled out for scrutiny since the Sept. 11 attacks five years ago.
So, as Kansas State students enjoy a string of home football games this month, they also are preparing for the campus' first celebration of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month.
"We really want to make this special. We're going to truck in halal food from Kansas City," Holland said. "The Saudi government is trying to place the students in a variety of institutions across the country, but where you get the competitive advantage is how you treat the students when they get here."
Marwan Al-Kadi, who was active in the Muslim student association while he studied industrial engineering at Kansas State, said efforts to raise awareness about religious diversity have helped the new influx of students feel comfortable.
"Sometimes people ask me if I ride a camel to campus. They don't even realize how many cities we have in Saudi Arabia," said Al-Kadi, lounging in a cafe near campus, as his cell phone rang intermittently. "I want to use the education to go back and work for my father's company."
Creating multigenerational ties
Elite Saudi families traditionally sent their children to schools in the United States, but their numbers fell sharply after Congress restricted visas following the discovery that 15 of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were Saudi, said Rachel Bronson, an adjunct senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Mohammed Al-Muzel, who grew up in the eastern Saudi city of Saihat and is joining Oregon State University's freshman class, is just the kind of student the scholarship program seeks to recruit.
His uncle studied in Portland in the 1980s, when Saudi-U.S. educational cooperation was at its peak. Almost three decades later, Al-Muzel will get his bachelor's degree in business an hour away, in Corvallis, Ore. Officials from both countries say multigenerational ties make it easier for them to navigate diplomatic conflicts, since leaders share a common educational background.
But some officials say efforts to fast-track educational diplomacy with Saudi Arabia could use additional scrutiny. Clark Kent Ervin, a former inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, says the U.S. government has yet to ensure proper safeguards are in place to do effective background checks on all applicants.
Yet for Allan Goodman, president and CEO of the Institute of International Education in New York, the new bilateral agreement is a "tremendously positive" step toward person-to-person diplomacy.
"These 15,000 students will really jump-start education and that will be a great addition to the Kingdom," said Goodman. "At its base, it's about mutual understanding."
Not only are the students fully funded, but they're also paying out-of-state tuition.
Kenneth Holland, associate provost for international programs.
What could be better than that!
Not allowing them here in the first place.
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My wife is waiting for the new Victoria's Secret Burkah catalog.
Our nation's institutions have completely lost their collective minds!
It is time to slam the door and take a hardline attitude on people from other countries.No more education for foreigners,no more immigration or acceptance of other beliefs."Diversity weakens the stong!"
It is time to slam the door and take a hardline attitude on people from other countries.No more education for foreigners,no more immigration or acceptance of other beliefs."Diversity weakens the strong!"
How many Saudi's who were educated in the US are trying to kil us now?
Its shameful that while American kids cant get into colleges the saudi's are taking up their places.
You know, I have always felt that people can be over educated. They live in a world of theory and not reality. It may sound ignorant to some but I want my kids to be more grounded. Do I want them to get good grades? Of course. But I also want them to experience life outside of academia. All of the highly academic people I have ever known, I thought were really strange. No common sense at all, it's like they think about everything but do nothing but give their supposed superior opinions. I also think "professional students" are baked as well. Had a cousin who had lots of degrees but never a job.
"Our nation's institutions have completely lost their collective minds!" "Collective", in the Communist sense of the word is exactly and precisely correct.
Florida's educational institutions were described by a mamber of the John's Committee as "Full of Commies and queers" way back in the McCarthy era.
There is a historic irony bringing the children of despots to FloriDUH to study under a socialist faculty.
There is an outrageous injustice that this is being done on the taxpayers dime. These Sand Savages are being allowed spaces which otherwise would have be filled by FloriDUH students.
Welcome to 'Warped World' of the Sheeples Republic of FloriDUH.
Oh great, all we need is more foreign students with an already firm hate America mindset to attend our universities where they will continue to be taught to hate Anerica.
Dialing for Dollars.
"It may sound ignorant to some but I want my kids to be more grounded."
It doesn't sound ignorant at all. It sounds like you have your kids' best interests at heart. Good post.
"but their numbers fell sharply after Congress restricted visas following the discovery that 15 of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were Saudi"
On the fifth anniversary I can only note how short memories are.
"but their numbers fell sharply after Congress restricted visas following the discovery that 15 of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were Saudi"
On the fifth anniversary I can only note how short memories are.
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