Saudi Gazette reports that students returning to Saudi Arabia after years of living and studying abroad are sometimes finding it difficult to slide back into their own cultures. Where things might have been easy in foreign countries — public transportation, dealing with bureaucracies, etc. — upon their return they’re met with cultural and social regulations that are inhibiting if not utterly dysfunctional. The need, for example, for a female to have a male guardian with her just to pay a bill is galling.
These returned students are realistic, however, in acknowledging that change — even inevitable and necessary change — comes slowly in the Kingdom. Patience will out.
Scholarship students: Big dreams, slow change
Laura Bashraheel | Saudi GazetteThousands of Saudi students under the King Abdullah Foreign Scholarship Program have had the opportunity to study at prestigious universities abroad — to gain education and expertise in specialized courses not offered in the Kingdom and then heartily contribute to their country’s development.
Recently, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah approved the extension of the scholarship program for another five years.
The Saudi government invests SR9 billion in King Abdullah Scholarship Program each year, providing full funding for 125,000 students — both in undergraduate and postgraduate programs abroad.
The scholarship’s main goals are to prepare Saudis to replace expatriate workers in jobs, thus reducing unemployment. Also, Saudi Arabia is going through a social and economic change and these graduates who hopefully on their return would contribute to create a more open society.
…
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
March:11:2013 - 14:55
The 23 year old law graduate doesn’t seem to realize that we all have to start a bit closer to the bottom.
March:12:2013 - 22:51
What I understand is that Saudi is losing their educated women as they are leaving to places like Qatar or UAE as many of them just don’t want to wait for the snail. Who can blame them……..why waste your life waiting on dinosaurs to die off.
It is one thing to live in the prison and have little knowledge of freedom than to have freedom and then live in a prison. Many women will not take well to a such a system after they have seen/lived a freer and better way for them. Once they have left such confinement there is really never anyway to come back to being a dependent. I suspect as time goes on and the number of women who go aboard grows this tide will be too much for the old establishment. It needs to die anyway as it is long over due for a fork.
March:15:2013 - 04:16
How interesting, I just had a barbershop conversation with a young man going through this exact transition. He’s been in San Fransisco for the past 6 years, has good friends in Oregon and managed to see quite a bit of the west coast. Now’s he’s back, looking for a job and seems grossly unprepared.
What was most interesting though was the fact that he said he doesn’t fit in here anymore. He’s come back to a small family, no friends and now he can’t really do the things he’s been doing for 6 years. Dating, mixing with women, discussing politics openly, drinking, dancing and etc…He’s been thrown into that “this is your life” scenario with the added shock of a very different culture to what he’s been experiencing for the past 6 years.