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2015 ). Furthermore, higher education is becoming extremely important throughout
the world, as a main requirement in the job market, and the public demand for
higher education is increasing exponentially. For further information, look at
UNESCO’s World Declaration on Higher Education for the Twenty-First Century,
for example ( 1998 ).
The positive role of higher education includes feasible public investment, better
public health, improved individual and social prosperity, a higher employment rate,
the enhancement of national identity, the creation of knowledge and innovation and
support for regional development and intercultural understanding (UNESCO 1995 ;
OECD 2000 ; 2003 ; Palvin 2012 ; Abouammoh et al. 2015 ).
Saudi Arabia has fully appreciated the important role of universities in regional
development, through reports and discussion groups, and seminars held at the
Centre for Higher Education Research and Studies (CHERS) in Riyadh. These
activities were based on the findings by many researchers (UNESCO 1991 ; Porter
2007 ; Goddard and Kempton 2011 ; Schmuecker and Cook 2012 ). In fact, almost all
new Saudi universities are located in small regions or municipalities.
Prior to the introduction of higher education in Saudi Arabia, the government
sent 14 students to study for a bachelor’s degree in Egypt in 1926. In 1949, the first
university college of Islamic law was established in Makkah. Then in 1957, univer-
sity education began with the inauguration of King Saud University, and in the same
year, a group of Saudi students was sent to study at a university in Texas in the
United States.
It is apparent that the higher education sector in Saudi Arabia has gone through
a very rapid development over the past decade. An enormous expansion on a geo-
graphical and quantitative level has occurred over the last 15 years. For instance,
there were six universities in 1975, and this number increased to 11 in 2005 and to
38 universities in 2014, including ten smaller, private universities. Furthermore, a
similar increase in the number of students and staff has occurred. For example, the
total number of students and staff has increased from 27,964 and 636,445, respec-
tively, in 2005 to 73,817 and 1,496,730 in 2014 (HESC 2015 ). A slight improve-
ment in the staff student ratio, from 22.8% to 20.3%, can be seen during these years.
However, the number of female students enrolled in HE institutions between 2005
and 2014 declined from 57.88% to 48.57%. This change is mainly due to the fewer
number of female students in the King Abdullah Scholarship Program (KASP) and
other scholarship programmes, compared to male students, where they form 25% of
the number of students studying abroad.
At present, higher education institutions enrol about 1.5 million students, and
university education is available to citizens in about 75 cities and towns in Saudi
Arabia. In addition, KASP, which started in 2005 with about 2500 students, enrolled
about 160,000 students towards the end of 2014, studying in more than 28 countries.
About 80,000 students are studying in US universities (Higher Education Statistics
Centre 2015 ). The development of higher education in Saudi Arabia has become a
priority, and the government has stated in its strategic plan that HE has to be a lead-
ing strategic sector in the movement of the Saudi economy, from being heavily
dependent on oil revenues to a multi-resourced economy, including industrial and
A.M. Abouammoh