Dispute over the King Abdullah Scholarship Program

This paper provides an evaluation of the sociocultural impact of The King Abdullah Scholarship Program in Saudi Arabia and in the United States. The data provided for the evaluation was gathered over a two-month period through an online survey that was shared throughout the social media channels. The information which was collected for this paper represents the program participants’ social experiences in the United States’ campuses to assist the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia, represented by the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission (SACM) in the United States, in making a final decision in regards to the continuation of the program.


Introduction
In 2005, the late King of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, established the King Abdullah Scholarship Program, which was given a five-year time limit.In 2007, King Abdullah extended the program for another 2 years, and in 2009 a further 3-year extension was granted.A few years later, in 2013, the Ministry of Education announced the new extension of the program to 2020."The King Abdullah Scholarship Program (KASP) [began] with an agreement between King Abdullah and [former] President George Bush to increase the number of Saudi students in the US" (Ministry of Education, 2012) [1].
According to the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia's website, the King Abdullah Scholarship Program provides the financial resources to authorize Saudi students to pursue their degrees in bachelors, masters, doctorate, and medical fellowships, at the best universities around the world.This evaluation will focus only on the 51.2% of Saudi students in the program who attend American universities.Academic disciplines and scholarships are selected based on the needs of the government ministries, national corporations and the private sector in Saudi Arabia.This selection aims to fulfill the requirements of the labor market across the kingdom's regions, universities and industrial cities.The program commissions qualified Saudi youth, who take an active role in developing all fields within government and private sectors (Ministry of Higher Education, 2010) [2].

KASP Vision
The program's vision is to prepare distinguished generations for a knowledgeable society built upon a knowledge-based economy (Ministry of Higher Education, 2010) [2].

KASP Mission
The program's mission is to prepare and qualify Saudi human resources in an effective manner so that they will be able to compete on an international level in the labor market and in the different areas of scientific research.The participants will become highly qualified individuals for Saudi universities as well as the government and private sectors (Ministry of Higher Education, 2010) [2].

Program Goals
 Sponsor qualified Saudis for study in the best universities around the world. Work to bring about a high level of academic and professional standards. Exchange scientific, educational and cultural experiences with countries worldwide.
 Build up qualified and professional Saudi staff in the work environment. Raise and develop the level of professionalism among Saudis (Ministry of Higher Education, 2010) [2].

Significance of the Study
The King Abdullah Scholarship Program reflects the government of Saudi Arabia's strategies to improve the standards of education throughout the country.
The Ministry of Education allocates a huge amount of money to help students pursue higher education at universities around the world (Ghafour, 2012) [3].
"Education researchers have called the King Abdullah Scholarship program the largest nationally funded higher education program in the world" (Molavi, 2015, para. 3) [4].
Although the King Abdullah Scholarship program may be viewed as progressive, it is also incredibly controversial.Saudi Arabia is considered the most conservative society in the world, as it "is the cradle of Islam… and arguably the most powerful Arab nation-state in global geopolitics" (Kraidy, 2007, as cited in Chakravartty & Zhao, 2007, 198) [5]. The foreign countries, where Saudi students reside during their studies, may sway their political views to claim more democracy and freedom.
 Girls, who cover half of the program population, may be influenced by the demand of women's rights in the western countries.
 This program may spark changes in social practices, tolerance for diversity, and acceptance of different cultures.

Establishing Evaluation Questions
This study focused on the sociocultural attitudes of the King Abdullah Scholarship Program participants.The controversy around this program has fueled the researcher's strong desire to emphasize the importance of the social aspects that the students gain from traveling abroad to study.This study was made to address the following research questions:  Does studying abroad impact the Saudi students' loyalty to the royal family? Does the King Abdullah Scholarship Program encourage political and/or religious rebellion?
 Does The King Abdullah Scholarship Program encourage students to participate in a volunteer work?
 Does The King Abdullah Scholarship Program allow students to enhance their global perspective?

Establishing an Evaluation Design and Measures
An evaluation was structured to examine whether The King Abdullah Scholar-ship Program is changing the sociocultural attitudes of Saudi students and whether it is encouraging participation in global activities and volunteer works.
Furthermore, the objective was to explore whether this program appropriately meets the needs of the educational sector in Saudi Arabia.Before establishing an evaluation design, the stakeholders' concerns were all about how to design an effective questionnaire that gathers the information they seek with a quick response rate from the proper population.
These arrangements for discovery have driven the evaluator to develop an oriented survey instrument.The choice of this instrument was made to cover the wide range of the program's participants.

Survey Analysis
In order to gain an understanding of the sociocultural influences of the King Abdullah Scholarship Program from the participants, the survey included 20 questions in total.The survey results indicated many surprising facts: as shown in Figure 1, 21.2% of the survey participants believed that studying in the United States has made them more conservative in their view of Islam.Moreover, only 12.1% think that their view of Islam has changed to be more liberal.The highest numbers of the participants, 29.5%, believed that studying in American universities has had no influence on their perspective of Islam Another remarkable point gathered from the survey, as seen in Figure 2, was that 43.9% of the King Abdullah Scholarship Program participants believed that their experience studying in the United States had not affected their view of the Saudi government or of the royal family.Unexpectedly, 16.7% of the survey participants became more dedicated to the Saudi government and royal family and 12.1% started to seek to more liberality.Additionally, it is obvious from the survey that the program intensely improved the participation rate of volunteer work among Saudi students.29.5% of the survey participants strongly agreed that attending American universities encouraged them to contribute in volunteer work (Figure 3).Consequently, many      In addition to the female education awareness supported by this program, another fact that caught the attention of the stakeholders is that Saudi students tend to become more independent from studying abroad.Not surprisingly, the challenges of living away from home and interacting with new people in foreign countries results in increased independence, especially amongst women: "Saudi women abroad experience being independent and the ability of doing things on their own.However, after returning from abroad, the difficulty to cope with bureaucracy becomes a burden" (Pasquesoone, 2011) [7].

Program Graduate Skills and Job Opportunities
This section was written based on job opportunities and employment demand conditions.There is a high demand of English language speakers in both sectors, governmental and private, due to the advancement of technology systems that require English language certification.Students who have graduated from Furthermore, every year since the King Abdullah Scholarship Program has been established, the Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission (SACM) has hosted a job fair in the US, which offers many work opportunities from the government sector and the private sector for the Saudi students who graduated from American universities.These students are sought after as employees for not only their language skills, but also for their advanced technology, social, and intercultural skills, as well as their acceptance of diversity.The survey shows that all program participants noticed an improvement in one or more of these skills (Figure 6).

Program Recommendations
This evaluation was created to assess the cultural impact of The King Abdullah Scholarship Program on participants' sociocultural attitudes.In terms of the use of this evaluation, the evaluator has two recommendations:  To help other researchers further develop this program.
 To help program graduates to transition back to Saudi society and culture when they return to their country.

Conclusions
The importance of this evaluation is in generating new understanding of sociocultural aspects of the program.Therefore, the usage of this evaluation should not only be provisionally in the duration of the program, but also revised and .4236/jss.2018.66011109 Open Journal of Social Sciences The extremist party in Saudi Arabia opposes the fundamentals of King Abdullah Scholarship Program with arguments based on the following points:  The Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia should instead invest funds in establishing and building new universities in their own country that can permanently serve more Saudi students generations.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.The experience of Saudi students, who are enrolled in King Abdullah Scholarship Program in the United States, about how studying abroad has changed their views of Islam.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. The Saudi students' different perspectives towards the Saudi Government or the Royal Family.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3.The American universities impact to the Saudi students in participating in volunteer work.

My
Experience studying in the United States has changed my view of Islam

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. How studying in the US have changed Saudi students global perspective towards cultural sensitivity.

Figure 5
Figure 5 presents a closer look at the personal development component of the program, which is represented by the independence level after enrollment.The illustration shows that 56.8% of the survey population became more independent after their enrollment, and only 1.5% of participants believed that the program has negatively affected their independence level.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. How KASP helped in developing the Saudi students' personalities into becoming more independent by studying abroad.
enhanced by additional researchers in the future.In a large-scale program like the King Abdullah Scholarship Program, in which thousands of students participate, researchers should invest their time and effort in gathering data and information to assist the improvement of the program outcomes.

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.The contribution of American universities in developing new skills in the Saudi students in different subjects.
The usage of open-ended questions allowed the evaluator to eliminate the most concerning aspect of the survey: how to assess and gain knowledge about the change in behaviors and unexpected actions from the program participants.The researcher prepared a survey for the King Abdullah Scholarship Program and distributed it to the range of participants in the population of interest through Facebook and Twitter.Fortunately, the survey collected 132 responses from different states and levels of education: