There has been a significant investment in education, which is great. In the last eight or nine years the number of Saudi Universities has more than quadrupled from about seven to over 30. Some of that increase has been through splitting up existing, very large universities, like King Abdul Aziz University, into more manageable sizes. Now they are able to provide their own focus and their own faculty and everything else. I believe it is a drive toward higher quality, which is of upmost importance.
Of course the other huge investment has been in scholarships for young Saudis to study overseas. We’ve only seen a couple of years of that now but the numbers are quite impressive. Saudi Arabia has one of the largest groups of students from any country studying in the United States, one third of them are women. China is number one but given the population differences it is quite astounding from a percentage basis how many Saudis are studying overseas.
