RIYADH – The Ministry of Higher Education has called back 512 students studying abroad and ejected them from the King’s Scholarship Program due to poor performances and frequent absences, Al-Hayat reported.
To help address the issue of poor academic performances abroad, the ministry is organizing orientation courses for students before joining universities abroad.
The courses will last for three months but may be extended to a year, “depending on their success”, said Abdullah Al-Mousa, undersecretary at the Ministry of Higher Education for Scholarships.
The ministry had also stopped sending scholarships to 42 universities around the world due to overcrowding and substandard performances on the part of the host institution.

Students complain
Nearly 90 percent of students sent on scholarships complained about the levels of stipends they receive.
The scholarship program was not spontaneously created. “It has been designed to meet the country’s requirements in all fields of specialization, especially those for which there is a great demand from the labor market,” Al-Mousa said.
The ministries of economy and planning and labor and the Council of the Saudi Chambers of Commerce and Industry were also actively involved in the program, he added.
Addressing the issue of scholarship students sent to Ukraine, Al-Mousa pointed out that those Saudis who studied medicine at their own expense or through the self-financing program had maintained high standards.
“This encouraged us to send a further 500 students on scholarships, but we later discovered some violations that led us to withdraw many of them from Ukrainian universities,” he said.

False certificates
Maged Al-Harbi, director of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques Scholarship Program, said the education ministry had discovered false certificates submitted by applicants for the King’s Scholarships Program.
Al-Harbi said the students, who had used the computer program Photoshop to doctor their credentials, could expect action to be taken against them.