US most preferred destination for Saudi students: Ministry

The Ministry of Higher Education recently issued a statement revealing that most of the students selected for the King Abdullah Foreign Scholarship Program preferred to go the United States of America to pursue their higher studies, while the least number of students chose Holland.
The ministry’s statement provides figures and statics showing that 69,235 students are currently studying in America and only 326 students chose Holland as the destination to complete their higher studies out of a total of 149,742 Saudis who have been awarded foreign scholarships by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.
The ministry released the figures following a discussion instigated by some bloggers regarding how many Saudi students benefit from the scholarship program, a local newspaper reported.
The same document also highlights the number of Saudi students enrolled in other universities around the world, indicating that 16,364 students are studying in various Arab universities. 14,459 are studying in the United Kingdom. A large number of scholarship students are attending universities in Canada and Australia, with figures pegged at 13,801 and 8,789 respectively.
Saudis are also attending universities in New Zealand, Ireland, China and Malaysia. Smaller numbers of students recorded at 945 chose to pursue their higher education in Germany, 923 in France and 744 students in Poland.
The report details the specializations chosen by the scholarship students, listing sciences, technology, and engineering majors as constituting 49.2 percent of the students’ preference, while 36.1 chose to study social sciences, business and law. Agricultural studies and humanities comprised the smallest percentages, accounting for 2.8 and 2 percent respectively.
In an earlier report, the ministry announced that 130,000 Saudis went abroad on the scholarship program in 2011. Within the same year, 27,510 females enrolled in international universities, comprising 23.2 percent of all the scholarship students for that year. The ministry’s report also show that 3,781 women studied abroad on their personal expense in 2011. Social sciences, law and business were the preferred choice of study for most of the female students, as 36 percent of them were enrolled in such fields, while 18.3 percent were registered in engineering and science majors.