AU graduate student Haifa Al-Mubarak is working toward her second free degree as part of a rapidly expanding scholarship program funded by the Saudi Arabian government.
Fanta Aw, director of the International Student Office, said the program, which started last January, is gaining momentum and will offer full tuition scholarships to 5,000 new Saudi Arabian students every year for five years.
Since Sept. 11, Saudi students have faced increasing scrutiny when applying for U.S. visas, Al-Mubarak said. Haifa said she is now further in her studies than her older brother, Faisal, because he had to wait three years in Saudi Arabia to receive his visa.
The visa approval process is only meant to take three or four weeks, but the government system is not always limber enough for a new, large program, Aw said. Many students' arrivals here were delayed because the U.S. embassy was not prepared to handle the large number of applicants, she said.
Universities that scramble for scholarship dollars may gain a disproportionate amount of Saudi scholars, a trend that could harm the program, Aw said. A large Saudi population at any university could discourage interaction with non-Saudi students, she said.
"What it does, in essence, is create good will, but only if it works well," she said.
The exchange agreement between President Bush and Saudi Arabian King Abdullah is intended to promote cultural understanding between the two countries. Since Sept. 11, many Saudi students have found that Americans are more interested in trying to understand Islam, said Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic Studies here at AU.
"It is crucial that the United States begins to engage with the Muslim world, and the best way is through education," he said.
A key issue for Al-Mubarak is to show Americans that "Islam is not a terrorist religion," she said. After Sept. 11, Al-Mubarak said she saw a profane statement against the entire Middle East in large letters across the back of a car. However, most Americans have been very nice to her, she said.
Both Americans and Saudi Arabians stand to benefit from the exchange, Al-Mubarak said. It is important that Saudis are exposed to Western culture at a young age, so they "can get over the ideology that everything is forbidden," Al-Mubarak said.
