The next stage of the King Abdullah Scholarships Program will include scholarships for media studies. The announcement was made Friday by Dr. Mohammed Aleissa, the Kingdom's cultural attaché to the United States, during a cultural program at the Riyadh International Book Fair. “We expect the program to offer more than just job opportunities,” Dr. Aleissa said in answer to a question about graduates of the program who had difficulty finding jobs. He said the program is expected to provide students with life experience they might not find while studying in the Kingdom, and to teach the values of self-reliance and independence as well. Dr. Aleissa said that there are over 70,000 Saudi students in all parts of the United States today. “There are Saudi students even in the state of Alaska,” he said. He also spoke about the hopes, aspirations and other initiatives of the program. “Last Ramadan, we launched an online portal that helped improve our services,” he said. The cultural attaché also clarified some issues, such as the ratio of advisors to students. “Some media outlets put the ratio at 6,000 students for every advisor,” Dr. Aleissa said. However, the real figure is about 300 students for every advisor. Dr. Aleissa pointed out that there were less than 400 court cases related to Saudi students in the US — an insignificant number compared to the fact that there are about 70,000 Saudi students in the country. He also said that 6,000 students will be graduating this semester from the scholarships program in the US. __
