The courses offered to students at Saudi universities and colleges have increased in line with demand. Today, men and women can opt to study medicine, the sciences, engineering, business management, law or mass communications, to name a few.
This was not always the case, especially for women pursuing higher education in Saudi Arabia.
In the past, women seeking jobs in the media, for example, had to go abroad to study mass communications. That changed two years ago when King Abdulaziz University (KAU) established the first mass communications department for women, enabling them to major in journalism. The university has also opened its doors to women to study law.
Hanan Ashi, a mass communications professor in the department that is located in KAU's Faculty of Arts & Humanities, said there are about 230 female students in the department.
"Unfortunately," she added, "the number of female academics who are willing to teach journalism is limited."
Once there are enough teachers, the department plans to expand courses to include a public relations curriculum. Engineering was once a subject open only to men in the Kingdom, but last year Effat University graduated its first batch of female electrical and computer engineers.
"Working in partnership with Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering in the US, Effat aims to set standards of excellence in electrical and computer engineering," said Imtiaz Ahmad, assistant professor in the department.
The engineering program offers four areas of study: digital systems, communications, microelectronics and control systems and robotics.
Three years ago, higher education for women took a leap forward with the launch of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), a graduate research institution for both sexes. The university, in Thuwal, a small village on the Red Sea coast to the north of Jeddah, opened its doors this year. Unlike other unmixed universities in the Kingdom, there is no segregation in classes or lectures. It is also the first university to allow men and women to study in the same classrooms.
Shih Choon Fong, the first president of KAUST, said that the university is not just another graduate-level research educational institution; it represents a paradigm shift - an intellectual, organizational innovation.
The aim is "to conduct high-impact research unconstrained by disciplinary boundaries, to create a new ecosystem for research unfettered by organizational strictures, and to build meaningful partnerships across communities, cultures and continents," he said.
KAUST has four divisions:
• Earth and Environmental Sciences and Engineering;
• Life Sciences and Engineering;
• Mathematical and Computer Sciences and Engineering; and
• Physical and Chemical Sciences and Engineering.
The gap between the output of the education system and the actual needs of the job market together with changing socio-economic developments in the Kingdom prompted a group of businessmen to found the College of Business Administration (CBA) in 2002. It offers both women and men bachelor's degrees in five subjects: marketing, information systems, accountancy, business logistics and human resources.
Last month, CBA signed an agreement with the Grenoble University in France enabling it to offer postgraduate courses, both master's degrees and PhDs in business administration.
Six months ago, the country saw another major leap forward for women's education. King Abdullah laid the foundation stone for the new campus of the Riyadh women's university. Accommodating 40,000 students, it will be the largest institution of higher learning for women in the world. It will have 13 colleges, including medicine, dentistry, nursing, naturopathy and pharmacology, and a 700-bed hospital. The project is due for completion next year.
Like Effat University, Dar Al-Hekma College is another private institution of higher education for women in Jeddah. Dar Al-Hekma was founded in the same year, in 1999. The college offers four-year bachelor's degree programs in six majors: management information systems, banking and finance, interior design, graphic design, special education and nursing.
Four new faculties will soon open upon upgrading the college into a university:
• The Faculty of Health Sciences and Humanities;
• The Faculty of Law and International Relations;
• The Faculty of Business and Economy; and
• The Faculty of Design and Architecture.
Al-Yamamah University in Riyadh, which was established in 2001, opened its doors for female students in 2004. Hessah Al-Sheikh, the dean of Yamamah's Women's College, said that the college currently has a 700-member student body.
"The same majors are offered for men and women. Women, however, tend to be more active and for them the university is their second home," said Al-Sheikh.
Yamamah offers bachelor's degrees in business administration and computing and IT with concentration options of the following disciplines: Programming and Databases, Networking and Security, Electronic Commerce, and Graphics and Multimedia. The university will start its executive MBA program in September 2009 for both men and women.
In 2003, the Arab Open University (AOU) was established with branches in many Middle Eastern countries, including two in Saudi Arabia (Riyadh and Jeddah). It is affiliated with the United Kingdom Open University (UKOU) and the agreement between the two universities covers three major areas: licensing of materials, consultancies, accreditation and validation.
AOU has a campus for both men and women offering three programs. The programs contents are accredited.
AOU envisages the offering of a range of awards upon the successful completion of certain academic and practical training requirements. The Prince Sultan University (PSU) was founded in 1999 offering learning opportunities for both men and women in Saudi Arabia. Today, the university has grown in number, reaching 1,546 students, both men and women, under three colleges offering ten major academic programs in the undergraduate level.
“The College for Women at Prince Sultan University is a more recent addition to the University's academic institutions,” said Dean Fadia Alsaleh. “The specializations offered today were chosen in accordance with the needs of the female work force in Saudi Arabia.”
Located near the Grand Mosque in Makkah, Umm Al-Qura University is one of the old established universities in the Kingdom. Women started studying in the university 43 years ago. Fifteen years later, the girls department was called the Deanship of Undergraduate Studies for Girls, offering bachelor and master degrees in Dawa and Islamic Studies, Usul-ud-Din (religion's basics), Education, Social Sciences, Applied Sciences and Arabic.
A College of Education for the Preparation of Female Teachers was also established.
King Khaled University is a public university in Abha, a city located in the southwest of Saudi Arabia. On July 26, 1998, King Saud University and Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University merged to became King Khaled University. A few years later, six colleges were established to cater to women:
According to the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities (www.webometrics.info), Riyadh's King Saud University (KSU) is ranked 292 out of 4,000 world universities. King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) located in Dhahran is ranked 302.
The management of Saudi Arabia's vast petroleum and mineral resources poses a complex challenge for scientific, technical, and management education in the Kingdom. To meet this challenge, KFUPM has adopted advanced training in the fields of science, engineering, and management as one of its goals in order to promote service in the Kingdom's petroleum and mineral industries. However, women are not involved at the heart of KFUPM or its complex challenge.
On the contrary, KSU, Saudi Arabia's oldest university founded by King Saud in 1957 in Riyadh has over 70,000 students. It offers degrees to women in arts, business management, law and political sciences, languages and translations, education, computer and information science, food and nutritional science, medicine, pharmacy, applied medical science, dentistry, and nursing.
According to the United Nations Development Program 2008 Saudi Arabia Human Development Report, remarkable progress has been achieved in the status of women in education, employment and health. Despite the relatively late start of education of girls, rates of enrollment of girls at all educational levels have increased sharply. The average annual rate of increase of total female enrollment in all educational stages was 6.3 percent over the period of 1975-2007, compared to about 4.2 percent for boys. Thus, in 2007, the gap in gender enrollment was closed at the primary, secondary and university levels.
At the university level, corresponding increases were from 20.6 percent to 20.9 percent for boys and 23.6 percent to 26.9 percent for girls. These rates demonstrate success in promoting gender equality in education, and in covering the appropriate age groups by educational institutions. Bridging the gap between boys and girls in enrollment at all educational levels has provided women with the education and skills needed in a modern society and has prepared them to participate in the labor market on a fair, equitable basis.
