341In fact, most of the selected applicants for KASP are excellent or very good stu-
dents. Conversely, most Saudi students who gained or were given KASP grants,
after joining international schools at their own expense, form more than 50% of
KASP programme holders and are either weak or less than average.
There are many benefits of KASP for Saudi Arabia, such as gaining access to
leading academics, exposure to state-of-the-art facilities, mastering foreign lan-
guages and reducing the negative perceptions held by some foreigners about Saudi,
Arab and Muslim cultures. Saudi students studying abroad can enhance some
important work values and social behaviours, such as discipline, punctuality,
teamwork, commitment to work and quality and perseverance. Abouammoh et al.
(2014a, b) indicated that the pros far outweigh the cons in their review of Saudi
scholarships to North American higher education institutions.
There is some criticism of KASP students in that a large portion of them who
pursue graduate degrees might be overqualified to take up certain vacancies in the
job market. Many of them are studying a master’s or a doctorate in business or other
allied disciplines, which is often a very different discipline to the one they studied
for their bachelor’s degree (HEO 2014 ). There is a high requirement to become
university teaching staff. It is necessary, at the very least, to have very good grade
on the first university degree, and all qualifications have to be in the same or a very
closely linked discipline. Furthermore, qualifications have to be gained from well-
recognised schools. These conditions make it difficult for many KASP graduates to
join the teaching profession at Saudi universities (HECUL 1994 ).
On the other hand, students studying abroad, mostly women, might have prob-
lems readapting and readjusting to their own culture after coming back to Saudi
Arabia (Alandejani 2013 ). The acculturation problem is an issue for almost all inter-
national students studying abroad (Almotery 2009 ; Mahmood 2014 ). This PhD the-
sis was done in a US non-metropolitan university, but the problem of acculturation
can easily be extended to other education environments and other nationalities.
The internationalisation of Saudi higher education is another issue to be investi-
gated. In fact, international students at Saudi higher education institutions increased
from 2.2% in 2005/2006 to 4.8% in 2013/2014. This is less than the ratio of inter-
national students in many higher education systems in advanced countries and in
many world-class universities, which is between 10% and 15% of the student popu-
lation. Conversely, the ratio of expatriate or international staff in Saudi higher edu-
cation institutions has slightly decreased from 42.9% in 2005/2006 to 42.5% in
2013/2014 (HESC 2015 ). Actually, the number of non-Saudi teaching and research
staff has experienced an increase of 161% during the same period. The concept of
having an all-Saudi university staff is not the objective of almost all higher educa-
tion stakeholders, but the high ratio of non-Saudi staff indicates the need to intro-
duce more effective programmes to address the growing need for Saudi staff at old
and newly established universities.
One other challenge facing higher education in Saudi Arabia is the teaching and
learning of English. At present, medicine, dentistry, engineering, most medical and
basic sciences are taught in English at most Saudi universities. Furthermore, many
of the KASP students, the majority of whom are studying in English speaking
19 The Regeneration Aspects for Higher Education Research in the Kingdom of Saudi...