After spending seven years studying in the United States and earning a PhD in sociology, Dr. Abdullah Al-Raba returned home to apply for a job as assistant professor at a local university. To his utter shock and surprise, Al-Raba's application was rejected by all Saudi universities he applied to. Even Gulf universities refused to take him on board, Alsharq newspaper reported. Undeterred, Al-Raba kept searching for a job in the Kingdom because he wanted to pay back to his country, which had spent around SR1 million on his education and living expenses in the United States. However, his efforts turned out to be fruitless. Giving up all hope of finding any job opportunity in the academic field in his own country, Al-Raba finally decided to return to the United States where he landed a position as assistant professor of sociology at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. Al-Raba obtained his PhD in sociology from Michigan State University in 2014. Like any fresh graduate, Al-Raba believed that Saudi universities would welcome him with open arms but he was shocked when 12 Saudi universities and five Gulf universities told him they did not have any vacancies although they had advertised in US newspapers seeking to recruit academics. "Now I realize that the job ads posted in these newspapers were meant for non-Saudis. It seems that Saudis are not welcome to the universities in their homeland," he said. Al-Raba holds two master's degrees, one in the Arabic language from King Saud University and the other in sociology from Michigan State University. His bachelor's degree was in Arabic. He participated in several conferences on sociology and published articles in various refereed journals. Speaking to Alsharq about his experience with local universities while looking for an academic position in the Kingdom, Al-Raba described it as "shocking" and "negative". "I believe what the Saudi universities are doing is a complete waste of the country's human resources. When I was in the US, I was patiently waiting for the day I would graduate and pay back the debt to my homeland, which I will always be grateful to. The thing I will never understand is why Saudi universities choose not to benefit from the academic capabilities of Saudis who have received excellent education and proved their qualifications abroad," he said. He hopes things would change for the better and his peers who are about to graduate from PhD programs in the United States, the United Kingdom and other countries would land lucrative positions at local universities and would be given an opportunity to impart the knowledge they have acquired to Saudi students.
