Anqari, Minister of Higher Education, has denied that any Saudi universities or other institutions have employed staff with bogus degrees. Al-Anqari said the recently discovered 60 holders of fake postgraduate degree certificates, including doctorate degrees, were not from teaching staff at any public or private university or higher institute in the Kingdom. At a press conference here on Tuesday to announce distance learning programs organized by King Saud University in Riyadh and King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Al-Anqari spoke on a number of recent educational issues, including university ranking systems. King Saud and King Fahd universities have achieved high rankings in the Academic Ranking of World Universities, Al-Anqari said, pointing to the QS Times Higher Education World University Ranking, announced on Tuesday. King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals and Umm Al-Qurra University have been ranked among the top 1000 universities in the world. Al-Anqari added, however, that classification criteria were not clear and because of that some of the Kingdom's universities were not properly assessed. “Saudi universities are now revising the mechanism used by academic institutions abroad in their classification and evaluation to mitigate any shortcomings in the information they require,” he said, emphasizing that such classifications are usually used as an index reflecting the standard of education and are not a goal in itself. Al-Anqari further announced an increase in the number of doctors sent on postgraduate study scholarships to address the shortage of teaching staff in medical colleges. Meanwhile, Dr. Ali Al-Attiya, Project Director at the Ministry of Higher Education, said that spending on current ministry projects, among them the new campuses in Al-Jouf, Baha, Hail, Jizan, Tabuk, and Najran has exceeded SR20 billion. Construction work in most of the universities, Al-Attiya said, is nearing completion, and they are expected to be operational with the new academic year. – Okaz __
