The 150,000 Saudi students studying overseas and 83,000 in the United States are just one part of Saudi Arabia’s higher education plans, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia James B. Smith said in a recent FocusKSA video with SUSRIS Editor-in-Chief Patrick Ryan.
Saudi Arabia has invested big in infrastructure for higher education, Smith said, and “while you’ve got to acknowledge the commitment to that infrastructure, the easy part is building the building. The challenging part is what is behind the walls – and on this you have to say that the expansion and commitment to education is at its infant stage…The curriculum…is still developing.”
However, with a large number of scholarship students studying abroad now returning home, many of these students with international experience “are earmarked to come back to these universities as professors, so the potential is there,” Smith said.
