RIYADH, 28 August 2003 — Higher Education Minister Dr. Khaled Al-Angari yesterday indicated the possibility of opening branches of some foreign universities in the Kingdom.

“Foreign investment in the private higher education sector is open. Some measures have been taken in this respect,” he told a press conference here yesterday.

Some 178,500 students were accepted at higher education institutions in the Kingdom this year, Al-Angari told reporters at the Ministry of Higher Education.

The minister said there was still room for an additional 27,000 students in colleges or universities. “The total number of students that can be accepted this year is 205,000 — the largest number in three years,” Al-Angari added.

The total number of high school graduates was 201,000.

The minister said the supreme council headed by Prince Sultan to study the matter had set up several subsidiary councils and eventually reached both short-term and long-term conclusions.

Its short-term recommendations included immediate increase of the number of places in higher education by 57,000. It also demanded the establishment of faculties and educational institutions providing direct training for the job market including medical colleges.

The council’s long-term recommendations included increasing the scope for acceptance in higher education institutions for high school graduates to respond to the population explosion in the country. It also recommended improving the quality of the education provided by these institutions.

Moreover the council urged support for private higher education institutions to meet the demands of school leavers.

The minister said both the Higher Commission for Investment and the Cabinet agreed to the recommendations and the process of implementation had begun.

Universities and colleges had also started taking steps of their own to improve the quality of their programs, the minister said. Some universities introduced new diploma programs and developed their part-time courses and expanded their faculties.

The minister said some educational institutions accept students who apply in the second half of the year, who make up some 20 to 25 percent of all applicants. Late applicants are usually students who resit subjects they flunked during their finals at high school.

“Acceptance (of applicants) is not the only problem in higher education in our country,” Al-Angari said. The ministry was also aware that there was a problem with quality. “The long-term recommendations from the ministerial council seek to improve the quality of educational programs,” he stressed.

“All the faculties that have been inaugurated in the past seven years respond to the demands of students and are linked directly with the needs of the labor market,” he said.

“They include five medical faculties, two dentistry faculties, three pharmaceutical faculties, four computer science faculties, and four science faculties,” he said. “Some divisions in existing faculties have also been expanded,” he added.

Another example of the drive for quality was social service colleges. Their two- to three-year courses directly responded to the needs of the labor market, the minister said adding students were ready to start work on completion of the courses.

“Ten social service colleges have been set up, and another seven will be added to next year’s budget,” said the minister. “There is no doubt that these colleges will absorb and train many high school graduates,” he added.

The minister said the decision to set up three independent institutions — in Madinah, Qasim and Taif — was taken to meet the demands of the labor market and to focus on technical majors. “Measures to separate these university branches and make them independent are under way,” he said.

Instructions had also been given to set up seven universities in areas in the Kingdom that do not have access to higher education such as Hail, Tabuk, Al-Jouf, Najran, Jizan, the northern region, and Taif, the minister said. “These colleges will be technical and will meet the needs of the job market,” he said.

Arab News asked about reports in the press about the influence of “wasta” or connections in allocating places to students with averages of less than 85 percent while others with averages of up to 97 percent were unable to find vacancies, the minister said: “Often people apply to a certain faculty, and they find that there are no vacancies. When they are told they could enroll in another department in the same faculty and then transfer the following year, they refuse and then go and complain to the press that they haven’t been accepted.

“In other cases, we have asked the journalists who write these stories to give us the name of the applicant so we can review the matter, but they refuse. It then turns out that they had heard it from someone and that it was bogus or the story was fabricated,” he added.