U.S. schools compete for Saudi students
Kingdom gives scholarships to thousands for new exchange program
The Associated Press Updated: 5:03 p.m. ET Sept. 9, 2006
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14743889

MANHATTAN, Kan. - Thousands of students from Saudi Arabia are enrolling on
college campuses across the United States this semester under a new
educational exchange program brokered by President Bush and Saudi King
Abdullah.

The program will quintuple the number of Saudi students and scholars here by
the academic year's end. And big, public universities from Florida to the
Kansas plains are in a fierce competition for their tuition dollars.

The kingdom's royal family - which is paying full scholarships for most of
the 15,000 students - says the program will help
stem unrest at home by schooling the country's brightest in the American
tradition. The U.S. State Department sees the exchange as a way to build
ties with future Saudi leaders and young scholars at a time of unsteady
relations with the Muslim world.

Administrators at Kansas State University, an agricultural school surrounded
by miles of prairie grass, say the scholarships are a bonanza for public
education.

"The Saudi scholarship program has definitely heightened our interest in
that part of the world," said Kenneth Holland, associate provost for
international programs. "Not only are the students fully funded, but they're
also paying out-of-state tuition."

Kansas State has boosted efforts to court Saudi officials in the last year,
flying administrators and department heads to the Saudi embassy in
Washington. It's paid off: last month about 150 Saudi students started
classes there, each funded to the tune of about $31,000.

Saudi to send more students than Mexico

Saudi Embassy spokesman Nail Al-Jubeir said 90 percent of the 10,229 Saudi
students the U.S. State Department has registered for the fall semester will
also get such scholarships.

By January, U.S. government officials say the program will expand to 15,000
students, which means Saudi Arabia will send
more foreign students to the U.S. than Mexico or Turkey. As funding for the
scholarship program expands, those numbers are likely to grow.

"This is a critically important bilateral relationship," said Tom Farrell, a
deputy assistant secretary for academic programs at the State Department.
"It's an opportunity to increase understanding of Saudi Arabia for the
United States and of the United States for Saudi Arabia."

College administrators say common misperceptions about the oil-rich nation
make it crucial to create a tolerant environment for Arab and Muslim
students, who have been singled out for scrutiny since the Sept. 11 attacks
five years ago.

So, as Kansas State students enjoy a string of home football games this
month, they also are preparing for the campus' first celebration of Ramadan,
the Muslim holy month.

"We really want to make this special. We're going to truck in halal food
from Kansas City," Holland said. "The Saudi government is trying to place
the students in a variety of institutions across the country, but where you
get the competitive advantage is how you treat the students when they get
here."

Marwan Al-Kadi, who was active in the Muslim student association while he
studied industrial engineering at Kansas State, said efforts to raise
awareness about religious diversity have helped the new influx of students
feel comfortable.

"Sometimes people ask me if I ride a camel to campus. They don't even
realize how many cities we have in Saudi Arabia," said Al-Kadi, lounging in
a cafe near campus, as his cell phone rang intermittently. "I want to use
the education to go back and work for my father's company."

Creating multigenerational ties

Elite Saudi families traditionally sent their children to schools in the
United States, but their numbers fell sharply after Congress restricted
visas following the discovery that 15 of the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11 were
Saudi, said Rachel Bronson, an adjunct senior fellow for Middle East Studies
at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mohammed Al-Muzel, who grew up in the eastern Saudi city of Saihat and is
joining Oregon State University's freshman class, is just the kind of
student the scholarship program seeks to recruit.

His uncle studied in Portland in the 1980s, when Saudi-U.S. educational
cooperation was at its peak. Almost three decades later, Al-Muzel will get
his bachelor's degree in business an hour away, in Corvallis, Ore. Officials
from both countries say multigenerational ties make it easier for them to
navigate diplomatic conflicts, since leaders share a common educational
background.

But some officials say efforts to fast-track educational diplomacy with
Saudi Arabia could use additional scrutiny. Clark Kent Ervin, a former
inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, says the U.S.
government has yet to ensure proper safeguards are in place to do effective
background checks on all applicants.

Yet for Allan Goodman, president and CEO of the Institute of International
Education in New York, the new bilateral agreement is a "tremendously
positive" step toward person-to-person diplomacy.

"These 15,000 students will really jump-start education and that will be a
great addition to the Kingdom," said Goodman. "At its base, it's about
mutual understanding."