Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06RIYADH3315
2006-05-02 15:28:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Riyadh
Cable title:  

HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE EASTERN PROVINCE: LIMITED

Tags:  SOCI PGOV KMPI KPAO KIRF KWMN SA 
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VZCZCXRO1056
PP RUEHDE
DE RUEHRH #3315/01 1221528
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 021528Z MAY 06
FM AMEMBASSY RIYADH
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 6978
INFO RUEHZM/GULF COOPERATION COUNCIL COLLECTIVE
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON 2590
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 0531
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 RIYADH 003315 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DHAHRAN SENDS
PARIS FOR ZEYA, LONDON FOR TSOU

E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/01/2016
TAGS: SOCI PGOV KMPI KPAO KIRF KWMN SA
SUBJECT: HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE EASTERN PROVINCE: LIMITED
OPPORTUNITIES, POOR QUALITY

REF: 2005 RIYADH 9116

Classified By: Consul General John Kincannon for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d
).

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 RIYADH 003315

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DHAHRAN SENDS
PARIS FOR ZEYA, LONDON FOR TSOU

E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/01/2016
TAGS: SOCI PGOV KMPI KPAO KIRF KWMN SA
SUBJECT: HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE EASTERN PROVINCE: LIMITED
OPPORTUNITIES, POOR QUALITY

REF: 2005 RIYADH 9116

Classified By: Consul General John Kincannon for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d
).


1. (C) Summary: Higher education in the Eastern Province of
Saudi Arabia offers limited opportunities for students,
particularly women and Shi'a. What is available is of
questionable quality, suffering from centralized and
religious control, poor student preparation, and difficulty
in recruiting professors of international caliber. Many
consulate sources believe that the system is too broken to
fix; many wealthy Saudis go to schools in Bahrain, the Gulf,
and further away. Private educational institutes meet some
of the excess demand, and even the public universities have
established fee-based programs for students who are not
accepted into their free mainstream offerings. End summary.


2. (SBU) Information reported here is based on conversations
and meetings over the past year by the CG, PolOff and the
PAO. Related past reporting includes 2005 Riyadh 9531 and
2005 Riyadh 9468, on specific universities in the EP, and
Riyadh 1982, Riyadh 1196, Riyadh 614 and Riyadh 332, on
discrimination in the education system.

--------------
TOO MANY STUDENTS, NOT ENOUGH SCHOOLS
--------------


3. (U) The Eastern Province (EP) is home to two major
universities - King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals
(KFUPM, 5,000 students) and King Faisal University (KFU,
14,000 students). The first private university in the
province, Prince Mohammed University (PMU) is set to open in
Fall 2006 with an initial class of 600 students. The
Kuwait-based Arab Open University (EP branch, 800 students)
provides a split distance-learning/in-class option in Al Ahsa
governorate. The Health Sciences College and the Teacher's
College in Dammam have small classes each year. The Jubail
Industrial College (JIC) in Jubail and the Institute for
Public Administration (IPA) in Dammam offer targeted programs

for a few hundred students to train them for industrial and
government work respectively.


4. (SBU) All of the public schools provide full tuition plus
stipends to accepted students. All of them also have many
more applicants than they can accept. KFUPM, considered an
elite institution, accepts about 10% of the 17,000 students
who apply. JIC accepts about 11% of its 7000 applicants. Even
KFU, responsible for meeting the higher education needs of
the EP, only accepts 25% of the applicants for its nursing
program, for example. The Dammam Health Science College
caused traffic problems at its downtown location on the day
it held entry examinations for applicants last summer. "It's
a country-wide problem, " says the vice president of King
Faisal University, Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Saati, noting that there
is huge gap each year between the number of high school
graduates and the available seats at colleges and
universities.


5. (C) Opportunities for women are even more limited.
KFUPM, JIC, and the Dammam branch of IPA only accept men. "We
are the university that admits girls," said Dr. Yussuf
Al-Gindan, president of KFU. Not all of the departments at
KFU are open to women, however, and some subjects are offered
to women on alternating years to maintain segregated classes.
Women are often taught via closed-circuit television, as
male professors are not allowed in the women's section of the
campus. Women are also relegated to second-rate facilities.
PolOff has heard of one biology student communicating by
letter to her professor about a difficult lab assignment; due
to segregation rules they are not allowed to meet in person,
nor can he examine her lab work.


6. (C) Limited access to higher education is also felt
keenly by members of the Shi'a minority in the Eastern
Province. Many Shi'a consulate contacts assert strongly that
there is outright discrimination limiting acceptance to
universities for Shi'a applicants, regardless of test scores
and other qualifications. One top Shi'a student who applied
to the Political Science faculty at Riyadh's King Saud
University was told that field was not open to Shi'a.
Repeated attempts to open a university in the Shi'a city of
Qatif have failed to gain government permission. In the most
recent attempt last fall, a delegation of Shi'a community
members was told that conservative members of the royal
family would not allow a branch of the Arab Open University
in Qatif. Shi'a women have particular difficulty gaining a
higher education, as they are less able than men to travel to
places with more opportunities.

--------------
A SYSTEM "ROTTEN AT THE CORE"
--------------


7. (C) "The Saudi educational system has produced garbage
for the last 30 years", says Abdul Aziz Al-Turki, a prominent
businessman from an influential family in the Eastern
Province. ConOffs have heard similar sentiments from many
other sources, many pointing to the overwhelming control of
the religious establishment over the country's education
system. Mohamed Yusof Rafie, VP of Industrial Relations at
Saudi Aramco says there is a need for more attention on
English and science and less on "the study of Quranic
inheritance laws during 5th grade." An American petroleum
engineer at Saudi Aramco told PAO that "none of the Saudis
educated in-country are qualified for the work (as petroleum
engineers). We hire them anyway, but their training is
lousy." And from Abdul Karim al Mutawwa, a businessman from
the Shi'a community - "the education system is rotten at the
core. The extremists have too much power and it affects
everything." (Note: Saudization laws have limited the
business community's ability to hire expatriates, making them
more dependent on the Saudi education system to produce
skilled labor. Many complain that the government has
required Saudization without strengthening the education
system, creating a shortfall of skilled labor. End note.)


8. (C) Many colleges and universities, including KFUPM,
JIC, and PMU, require students graduating from the Saudi
public school to do a 'preparatory year' of study in English
and math before starting the regular degree program. Saudi
press reports assert that 87% of Saudi high school graduates
do not have basic English skills. "The English curriculum is
very weak; the students need a prep year," agrees Dr. Issa
Alansari, the president of PMU. For many students, the prep
year is challenging; JIC has a dropout rate of over 50%.


9. (C) The schools and the academic community in the
Eastern Province are much more strictly segregated than other
professional areas, such as business. Interaction with
outsiders is discouraged. Many administrators complained of
the difficulty in recruiting internationally qualified
professors. Officially, Ministry of Foreign Affairs approval
is required for ConOffs to visit KFUPM or KFU; individual
academics and administrators will meet with us at 'neutral'
locations but interaction with students is difficult.
Consulate Public Diplomacy programming that has successfully
reached students has been offered at off-campus locations
near the university.

--------------
WANT A QUALITY EDUCATION? LEAVE THE COUNTRY
--------------


10. (C) Solutions, both at the individual and the
government level, have centered on finding quality education
outside of the country. In the Eastern Province, many people
take advantage of the 1-hour commute over the causeway to
Bahrain to access a better education system. Saudi students
at all levels, from grade school to graduate school, commute
to Bahrain each day. At the Arab Open University branch in
Bahrain, for example, there are almost 1000 Saudi students.
Many people also go further away, within the Gulf countries
and elsewhere. Saudi Aramco sends 300 people to study at US
and other universities each year, after a preparatory
post-high school year.


11. (C) The Saudi government, with the announcement in June
2005 of scholarships for 15,000 Saudis to study abroad, chose
the same option. The response was overwhelming; more than
47,000 Saudi students applied for the scholarships in the
first six months. The pressure on the limited resources of
the Saudi universities has decreased as a result;
administrators at KFU, KFUPM, JIC and other educational
institutes have told ConOffs that the scholarship program has
affected their applicant pool. Most consulate contacts
believe that the scholarships have been administered fairly
to date, regardless of gender or religious affiliation. The
Shi'a community has benefited tremendously. Shi'a community
organizers in Qatif and Al-Ahsa areas have helped hundreds of
students navigate the university and visa application
procedures. Over 300 students attended a Study in the USA
Seminar in Qatif organized by the Mission's Public Affairs
section. There are indications that as many as 30% of the
scholarships have gone to Saudi Shi'a (although they comprise
perhaps only 10-15% of the Kingdom's population) because the
Shi'a have sought out the opportunity more aggressively due
to their circumscribed opportunities at home. Funding for
women includes the option of a stipend for an accompanying
'muhram' or guardian. Some women have taken advantage of the
opportunity, although many still face family opposition to
their travel and study abroad; more than 90% of the
scholarships have gone to Saudi males.

--------------
THE PRIVATE SECTOR MOVES INTO SAUDI EDUCATION
--------------


12. (SBU) Privatization of higher education is starting in
the Eastern Province. Many private institutes now provide
diploma or certificate degrees in the Eastern Province. They
are of varying quality; some like the Al Bassam Institute
have partnered with on-line diploma mills under USG legal
investigation. Others, like DirectEnglish, offer legitimate
English and computer courses. Public universities in the EP
have recently opened 'parallel tracks', where students pay
tuition. At KFU 800 students a year are accepted into the
'self-budgeting community college'. KFU's medical school
accepts a small class of paying students as well, "where we
test new, expensive teaching techniques," said the
university's president. JIC has also started a tuition-based
program for students who are not accepted in the regular
track. The for-profit Institute for Industrial Management
and Information Technology offers a diploma modeled after
KFUPM's curriculum.


13. (C) Prince Mohammed University, opening in Fall 2006
will be the first private university in the Eastern Province.
It has had strong support from the eponymous Governor of the
Eastern Province, Prince Mohammed. PMU will be an expensive
university with high aspirations, and has been developed in
close cooperation with the Texas International Education
Consortium. Like the Arab Open University branch in Al Ahsa
which is supported by Prince Talal bin Abdulaziz, it has a
different curriculum than the public universities along with
a high-level royal sponsor. "We expect to be the most
distinguished university in the Middle East," says Dr. Issa
Alansari, the president of PMU. The manager of the Khobar
branch of DirectEnglish told PAO that he considered
developing an inexpensive, for-profit, college, but ran into
government obstacles. "The government only wants expensive
places with Olympic-size pools," he said.


14. Comment: The Saudi system for higher education in the
Eastern Province is unable to meet student demand. Real
reform in the Saudi education system remains elusive. The
emergence of private universities like the Prince Mohammed
University and the Arab Open university will help provide
better options, but so far remain small. Many working-level
university administrators in the EP requested ConOffs'
assistance in creating linkages with US universities and
professors. Given the influence of the religious
establishment, such activities should be carefully designed,
yet are desperately needed, as noted in the Public Diplomacy
Strategy for Saudi Arabia (reftel). Scholarships to study
abroad are a welcome relief to the pressure on a weak
educational system in Saudi Arabia, but are not a viable
long-term solution to the need for educational reform.

(APPROVED: KINCANNON)
GFOELLER