Higher Education Minister Khaled Al-Anqari emphasized his ministry’s desire to accommodate the largest number of secondary school graduates in the Kingdom’s universities and colleges this year.

“We have developed admission procedures in coordination with universities in various parts of the country. Many of them provide electronic admission services through the Internet,” he said.

“So far we have coordinated with 24 universities to accept 278,000 secondary school graduates during the 2010-2011 academic year,” Al-Anqari said. “This number is 12 percent more than the seats made available last year,” he pointed out.

He said Saudi universities are capable of accommodating about 90 percent of secondary school students who are expected to graduate this year. “Private universities and colleges in the Kingdom will be able to provide an additional 15,000 seats,” he explained.

Many graduates of secondary schools would be joining the technical and vocational training institutes under the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation (TVTC), the Institute of Public Administration and the university colleges in Jubail and Yanbu.

“This shows that universities and other educational institutions in the Kingdom are well-prepared to receive all secondary school graduates in the Kingdom,” Al-Anqari said. He said the ministry would give priority to those specializations that are required by the Kingdom’s job market.

The minister disclosed the government’s plan to provide more foreign scholarships to Saudis under the King Abdullah Scholarship Program, which is currently benefiting 88,000 Saudis who pursue their higher studies in 24 countries.

“The King Abdullah Foreign Scholarship Program has become another option for the secondary school students,” he said. The government announced last year that it would pay tuition fees of 50 percent of students enrolled in private universities and colleges in the country every year, for five years. The ministry has licensed nine more new private colleges, he said.

Al-Anqari said government universities have been instructed to open special offices to receive the complaints of students, solve their problems and clear their doubts.