It appears that a good number of the 10,000 Saudi Students bound for the United States will reside in Oregon. From The Oregonian:
Students from Saudi Arabia are enrolling at Oregon universities in numbers not seen since before Sept. 11, 2001. More than 80 total have begun fall classes at Portland State University, the University of Oregon and Oregon State University, and another 600 have been granted admission for winter term.
The enrollment boom is playing out across the United States as Saudis take advantage of a sweeping new scholarship offer from the oil-rich Saudi government.
The kingdom is providing all-expenses-paid academic scholarships to 5,000 Saudis each year for the next five years for study abroad, said a spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C. Many are choosing U.S. campuses, public and private, reversing a sharp decline in Saudis at American universities after terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.
Arab news outlets reported the scholarship offer in June, two months after Saudi King Abdullah met with President Bush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch. In a joint statement released by the White House in April, Bush and Abdullah pledged to expand programs “to increase the number of young Saudi students to travel and study in the United States.”
The purpose of the scholarships is to expose Saudis to different education systems and to build “people-to-people contact” with citizens of other countries, said Nail Al-Jubeir, a Saudi Embassy spokesman.
Please read it all.