Higher education in Saudi Arabia

[3] According to the governmental records, the number of Saudi students who registered for higher education in 2006 was 636,000 (268,000 were males, and 340,657 were females).

[5][6] Established in 1949, the College of Shariah and Islamic Studies in Makkah is the first higher educational institution in Saudi Arabia.

[8] There are more than 29 governmental universities, that consist of colleges and faculties that issue certificates and degrees in the BA, MA, and PhD levels in many majors.

[1] In 1976 the Higher Education Center for Women and several colleges of medicine and pharmacology for female students were established.

[14] Nourah is a former teacher who studied in the United States and was appointed as Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Education.

Princess Nora University is the first college for women in Saudi Arabia and the largest globally, with 32 campuses around Riyadh city.

[16] A large portion of students involved in this program have gone to American universities, spurred by the 2006 agreement between King Abdullah and U.S. President George W. Bush which quintupled the amount of Saudis studying in the U.S.[17] The Saudi Digital Library is a massive digital library that contains more than 680,000 electronic books in many fields that support and meet the needs of beneficiaries in the higher educational sector in Saudi Arabia.