Saudi students on foreign scholarships have not been involved in any felonies, but generally in misdemeanors punishable by a fine or short-time detention, said Abdullah Al-Musa, Deputy Minister of Higher Education for Scholarship Affairs. Al-Musa was speaking during a meeting Sunday in Khobar with scholarship students before their departure to their study destinations. Most of the offensives committed by Saudi students abroad were limited to unruly behavior, discipline problems, or violations of their student visas, like changing their place of residence without reporting it to local authorities, he added. All students reported to have violated local laws would be sent back home and have their scholarships terminated, Al-Musa said. The number of scholarship students has now hit the 130,000-mark, he said, “with 17 percent of upcoming scholarship seats reserved for women,” he said. The foreign scholarship program has only 19 scientific disciplines open for grab by interested students, he said, emphasizing that no transfer of discipline requests would be honored once a discipline has been booked for a student. Scholarship students are not allowed to work in the country of their residence without the approval of their schools and local authorities, he told the new scholarship students. Al-Musa has advised Saudi students, who are abroad at their own expense, to avoid schools that are not accredited by the Ministry of Higher Education, if they wanted to be transferred to the scholarship program. He also called on them to return to the Kingdom to benefit from the new national scholarship program in which the government pays 50 percent of the tuition.
