The figure is also set to increase with the opening of new colleges and universities across the Kingdom for which the government has earmarked SR150 billion in the current budget.

“The budgetary allocation will ensure the completion of several huge projects,” said Dr. Ali bin Sulaiman Al-Atiyah, deputy minister at the Ministry of Higher Education, in a statement.

He added that the ministry has planned to set up 10 new colleges at a cost of SR9 billion in addition to the existing educational projects that are currently under way.

He also said about 26 percent of the national budget has been allocated for education, which “clearly indicates the leadership’s keenness to invest in building human capacities.”

“The Saudi government is also improving the quality of girls' education as part of a new reform policy initiated by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah,” said a booklet, which is part of a series of five booklets released by the Ministry of Higher Education on Tuesday.

The booklets, prepared by the ministry's General Department for Planning and Statistics, give an overview of the Kingdom’s educational achievements with special reference to girls’ education, science and technology.

According to the booklets, the ratio of female recipients of the Kingdom's overseas scholarship program was abysmally poor with 20 percent of them benefiting from the massive scholarship funds.

According to a book about women in higher education, there are over 300 women’s colleges in the Kingdom.

“Saudi Arabia also ranks 25 among countries in terms of women’s enrollment in higher education courses globally,” said the booklet.

Princess Noura Bint Abdulrahman University for Women will further boost this number as this university alone will have 40,000 students on its rolls shortly, it added.

On the quality of education, another booklet about quality improvement initiatives said the Ministry of Higher Education had launched several programs in this regard.

Major quality initiatives include plans to establish research excellence centers, promoting creativity among faculty members, translation of important textbooks and students’ counseling programs.

On science and technology, the Kingdom has exerted more efforts to develop scientific and technological capacity as well as infrastructure.

“Saudi Arabia ranked fourth among OIC member states in terms of science and technology,” said another booklet about Saudi universities on the world map.

“Scientists and engineers from the Kingdom and the Muslim world have made a name for their genius and hard work,” it added. This “brain drain” of scientists and engineers continues to afflict the Muslim world today, it says. “Stopping this brain drain and reversing it may be the key to harnessing scientific innovation for the benefit of societies in the Muslim world, especially in rich Muslim countries,” said the booklet.

But, as successive United Nations development program reports attest, poverty is a serious problem in at least half of the world’s Muslim countries.

In sub-Saharan Africa, which is predominantly Muslim, as much as 90 percent of the population of some countries subsist on less than $2 a day in purchasing power parity terms. Millions of Muslim children around the globe are malnourished and most refugees in the world today are Muslim.