Job Discussion Forums

[wantok]

Kalamazoo, Michigan: The Western Michigan University is getting ready for the arrival of 300 students from Saudi Arabia, one of the kingdom�s largest delegations to educational institutions in the United States.

Saudi students also are the largest single national group among international students on the Kalamazoo campus.

Like most international students, the Saudi contingent generally starts at the Centre for English Language and Culture for International Students. It�s designed to give second-language English speakers a collegiate-level English competence.

The university�s international studies chief Juan Taveras said Saudi authorities generally prefer to limit the number of students sent to any given campus to 125. He said the university succeeds in attracting more students because of the rigour of its second-language English programme.

http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/saudi-students-stand-out-at-us-university-1.1063850

[nomad soul]

Nothing new; the same thing is happening at other US university English language centers, often to the point of saturation.
I found this other story more interesting because it also shows the Saudi students' perspective:

Saudi students flock to US universities
AFP, Gulf News | August 19, 2012
(Source: http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/saudi-students-flock-to-us-universities-1.1063645 )

Study programmes to boost national workforce help break stereotypes

WASHINGTON: Dressed in caps and gowns, the college students packing a graduation ceremony in suburban Washington, D.C., acted like excited graduates anywhere in the United States.
Except, perhaps, when the men broke into tribal line dances. Or when the women, wearing headscarves, burst forth with zagareet, soaring trills of their tongues, in celebration. The more than 300 graduates gathered at a hotel overlooking the Potomac River were all from Saudi Arabia, part of a massive government-paid foreign study programme to earn Bachelor�s, Master�s and doctorate degrees and return home to help run their country.

�You are the best of the best, and the future of our country,� Saudi Arabia�s cultural attache, Mohammad Al Eisa, declared at the May event.

In the years following the security crackdown on Arab travellers after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, tough restrictions kept most Arab students away from the country. In 2004, only about 1,000 Saudis were studying in the United States, according to the US State Department.

This past school year, Saudi Arabia sent 66,000 students to US universities, four times the number before the 2001 attacks and the fastest-growing source of foreign students in the US, ahead of China, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Saudi influx is part of a broader increase in international students in the US as American universities seek to raise tuition revenues. Some 723,277 foreign students enrolled during the 2010-2011 school year, up 32 per cent from a decade ago.

�With the financial crunch... the [US] administrators look to the international students to a degree as saviours,� said Michael Launius, vice-president of international students at Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington, where Saudi enrolment has jumped from a non-existent level in 2005 to about 150 this past school year. To accommodate the new Saudi students, Washington administrators offered to provide halal food prepared in accordance with Islamic law, or set aside space on campus for a mosque. The Saudi students declined, preferring to eat at town cafes like everyone else, Launius said. The Saudi contingent �doesn�t seem to have caused any kind of consternation and stir at all�, Launius said. �I think this is a good exposure to what these folks are actually like.�

As late as the 1950s, Saudi Arabia had a literacy rate of below 5 per cent. Today, the percentage of literate Saudis has reached 79 per cent, according to the CIA World Factbook. One-third have university degrees, the World Bank says. Even so, religious conservatives have a lingering influence over curriculum. Critics say Saudi schooling is long on theology and short on science and math. The kingdom ranked 93rd out of 129 countries in Unesco�s 2008 quality of education index. In the past, only upper class Saudis were educated abroad. The king�s scholarship programme, by contrast, reaches out to promising young people in all levels of society, says Ahmad al Omran, a Saudi journalist who earned a Master�s from Columbia University. At the graduation ceremony in Washington in May, Saudi degree recipients ranged from second-generation US graduates, to the first in their families to read and write.

To be eligible for the programme, students must have top grades and generally study in a field targeted by the government � such as business, engineering or medicine. Females are required to be accompanied by a close male relative. The government urges students to avoid political activity and media attention, students say.

In the US, closer Saudi ties still generate controversy. However, some of Saudi Arabia�s harsher critics have supported the scholarship programme. �If anybody is going to modernise [Saudi] society, it�s going to be people� with exposure to the West, said Elliott Abrams, a conservative policy analyst who served in two Republican administrations. �In that sense I�m all in favour of it.�

The long-term impact on Saudi society of so many students being educated abroad remains to be seen. At a coffee shop in the hotel where the graduation ceremony was held in Washington, the recent graduates spoke of eagerness to get back to Saudi Arabia as well as a wistfulness at leaving the US. �The best four years I ever had,� graduate Dana Al Mojil said of her study at Portland State University. Dana was rueful about turning over the keys to her Pontiac to her younger sister and other relatives, who are still studying in the United States. In Saudi Arabia, women aren�t permitted to drive. She also indicated she would miss other aspects of life in the United States. �I pay bills myself. I shop myself,� Dana said. �In Saudi [Arabia], you don�t do that.� Munir Zaimy, a 26-year-old with a new master�s degree from Southern Methodist University, said he would return home with new ideas about education, business and other fields. When �we go back, we want things to be better,� he said. �Not American, not Saudi � better.�

Back in Riyadh, many students who have returned express satisfaction at settling back in with families and jobs and repaying their country with hard work. For others, especially some women, a foreign education is more complicated. Deema Al Mashabi, 24, is weighing whether to accept an offer of a king�s scholarship for a Master�s degree in the US. Her mother has asked her to refuse. �She feels that I would like it so much if I do go abroad...that I would never come back,� she said. Her mother also worries that Saudi men may be reluctant to marry not only Deema but her sisters if she brings Western ways back to the family. Deema says that many of her female friends who were scholarship students return home only to move back abroad.

In Saudi Arabia, more than 40 per cent of young Saudi women job-seekers are unemployed because custom and religious code limit where they can work. Indeed, conservative Saudi clerics have targeted the kingdom�s scholarship programme, saying it is detaching young Saudi men and women from their religious mooring. �The scholarships dragged woe onto our nation,� Shaikh Nasser Al Omar told Saudi Arabia�s Al Sharq newspaper in May.

(End of article)

[wantok]

That's culled from WSJ's take which has 300 comments plus photos plus interactive graphics: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304830704577492450467667154.html

The King's attempt to defuse the ticking Arab Spring time bomb? Even if there were dissent, political parties are banned, so the country lacks networks to mobilize people. An absolute monarchy, Saudi Arabia is the least democratic country in the Middle East, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit�s 2011 Democracy Index. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-02/saudis-skip-arab-spring-as-nation-pours-money-into-jobs.html

Yet, It smells like springtime. http://www.economist.com/node/21548973

For better or for worse, Saudi Arabia�s political stability is a cornerstone of what order and predictability remains in the Middle East. Think about what serious unrest in Saudi would mean for world oil prices, the political situation in neighbors from Yemen to Bahrain and Iraq, and for the global effort to stop the Iranian bomb � and you will understand why Saudi youth unemployment is everybody�s concern. http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/04/11/youth-unemployment-alarmingly-high-in-saudia-arabia/

Seventy-eight percent of Saudi women who are unemployed hold university degrees, whereas 16 percent of unemployed men have university degrees. http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6891

♀ As horrible as the roughly 40 percent unemployment figures are for Arab young people overall, they're worse for any ambitious college-educated Saudi women, analysts say: 30 percent of Saudi women of all ages looking for jobs can't find any, and 78 percent of the fruitlessly job-seeking women have university degrees. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/07/19/all_play_no_work?hidecomments=yes

[KME0050]

I had plenty of experience teaching Saudis at a Big Ten university before I ever taught in Saudi Arabia. Linguistically, the challenges were many, but I never experienced real behavior issues with my Saudi students. In fact, I found them to be quite charming. My experience teaching Saudis in Saudi Arabia was probably the same as that of everyone on this form--a mixed bag in terms of classroom behavior, and by no means easy.

I have a friend who taught part-time in Western Michigan University's ESL program this summer and every single student in her 2 classes was Saudi. Their behavior, en masse, was very much what we experience teaching in Saudi universities. They attempted to censor the content of her lessons and would complain, as a group, to the program director when they felt she had crossed one of their moral or religious lines, which, we know, can border on the ridiculous. My friend was then chastised by management for being culturally insensitive, though I am quite sure this would never have happened had their been a traditional mix of nationalities in her university ESL class.

When she scored papers and exams, again, her students behaved just as they would in their own country. As a group, her students went to the director and complained about the unfairness of their teacher's grading policy and of the horrible things that would befall them if their grades were not changed. While this can be irritating if one or two students behave in this manner, it is outrageous when 12 or 15 students storm the director's office and demand that their grades be changed.

My friend calls this summer one of the worst teaching experiences of her career. Instead of the lively interchange of ideas, open discussions of culture-based values, and the very valuable cultural exchange between students that has made her ESL teaching career in the U.S. rewarding, she experienced censorship, suppression of expression, and very distasteful coercion by administrators to kowtow to students.

I have a hard time imagining that Saudi students will be able to exercise this kind of control once the get into their academic classes, but I suspect faculty will also feel pressured to bite rather gently the hands that feed them.

This huge influx of Saudis into American higher ed will likely keep some struggling ESL programs afloat and will create more teaching opportunities, which are unarguably good things, but if my friend's experience is any indication of what else is to come . . . I'd rather teach in Saudi Arabia. There, I know what to expect and will be well-compensated for my sacrifices, compromises, and the various mental contortions required of me.

[veiledsentiments]

[scot47]

Many Saudis are deeply in love with the USofA. They have the same obsession with "modernity" and the motor car. To thios of us from the Old World, their attitudes to religion often seem more similar to our American cousins than to our own.

After 9.11 there was a hiatus in sending students to the US on government scholarships. I was always ab it puizzled by the number of studnts who asked me if I though they should accept a scholarship. I usually told them to make up their own minds but added that if someone had offered to send me all expenses paid to the US at the age of 18 I would have been on the next plane !

[wantok]

512 students called back from abroad

Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH � The Ministry of Higher Education has called back 512 students studying abroad and ejected them from the King�s Scholarship Program due to poor performances and frequent absences, Al-Hayat reported.
To help address the issue of poor academic performances abroad, the ministry is organizing orientation courses for students before joining universities abroad.
The courses will last for three months but may be extended to a year, �depending on their success�, said Abdullah Al-Mousa, undersecretary at the Ministry of Higher Education for Scholarships.
The ministry had also stopped sending scholarships to 42 universities around the world due to overcrowding and substandard performances on the part of the host institution.
Students complain
Nearly 90 percent of students sent on scholarships complained about the levels of stipends they receive.
The scholarship program was not spontaneously created. �It has been designed to meet the country�s requirements in all fields of specialization, especially those for which there is a great demand from the labor market,� Al-Mousa said.
The ministries of economy and planning and labor and the Council of the Saudi Chambers of Commerce and Industry were also actively involved in the program, he added.
Addressing the issue of scholarship students sent to Ukraine, Al-Mousa pointed out that those Saudis who studied medicine at their own expense or through the self-financing program had maintained high standards.
�This encouraged us to send a further 500 students on scholarships, but we later discovered some violations that led us to withdraw many of them from Ukrainian universities,� he said.
False certificates
Maged Al-Harbi, director of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Scholarship Program, said the education ministry had discovered false certificates submitted by applicants for the King�s Scholarships Program.
Al-Harbi said the students, who had used the computer program Photoshop to doctor their credentials, could expect action to be taken against them.

Comment 8:
no please. i do not wanna go home empty hands. i do not want anyone to call me loser ): this article scared the hell out of me. imagine that after we spent 3 years in the states, we called back to go home. omg wish us good ya shabab (:

http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&contentID=2008091917654

[scot47]

This and similar programmes have usually had a high drop-out and recall rate. Can't be easy for these kids from the sheltered background of life in KSA to suddenly find themselves exposed to all those temptations !

[spiral78]

I think it's not only about temptation, but also very much related to a lack of experience with working hard and being expected to actually meet real standards.


In our pre-med programme for Saudis, being sent home wasn't an actual option.

Of the couple of hundred who've gone through the programme so far, there have been some failures - they ended up at a university in Warsaw, where presumably the entry-level and ongoing standards must be lower (I don't know whether the 'losers' ultimately succeeded in Warsaw).

But they weren't sent home, which I strongly suspect is what some of the women wanted. These weren't the ambitious type, and probably shouldn't have been chosen for study abroad to begin with.

The academic standards in our programme have been quite rigorous and have been upheld by the powers that be, so ours are generally quite pleasant to work with, thankfully.

[wantok]

Frequently female students repatriating from especially America are deemed "unmarriable".

[johnslat]

It may have changed a little (I hope it has,) but, in my experience, Saudi males are not all that keen to marry intelligent, well-educated Saudi ladies.

Well, that's a general prejudice I observed, but, of course, the SMART Saudi males would be an exception.

Regards,
John

[scot47]

I met some Saudi females who were on the "Special Training Program" It had this name rather than "Women's Training Program" within ARAMCO. Very smart and hard-working and they were being prepared to study subjects like Chemical Engineering ! A year at ARAMCO and they went off to the States.