LIANE HANSEN, host:
Students from Saudi Arabia are enrolling at American colleges and universities this winter in numbers not seen in decades, certainly not since the 9/11 attacks. Full ride scholarships from the oil-rich Saudi government get the credit.
Correspondent Tom Banse has more from Corvallis, Oregon.
TOM BANSE reporting:
College for many international students starts with intensive English.
Ms. BARBARA DOWLING (Reading and Writing Instructor): Let's figure out how many countries do we have in this class. How many different countries?
BANSE: Reading and writing instructor Barbara Dowling is used to hearing a potpourri of accents. But this quarter her Oregon State University students come overwhelmingly from one place: Saudi Arabia.
Ms. DOWLING: So it's quite different this term. So please try to speak in English...
BANSE: It's a huge turnaround. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the news that many of the hijackers were Saudi, nearly all the Saudi students studying in the United States went home, for fear of being caught in the anti-Arab backlash. Last year, the Saudi government set out to repair relations, with people-to-people contact. The embassy describes it as different from past image-building campaigns.
Saudi Spokesman Naab Al-Giber(ph) explains the intentions behind a grand scholarship program.
Mr. NAAB AL-GIBER (Saudi Spokesman): I think the country's best ambassadors are their people. And in this case, we have the best and brightest who are coming to study here to learn about America, what America is, firsthand.
BANSE: And that leads to the more important goal, says Al-Giber: to foster a more favorable view at home of America. The monarchy's partnership with the U.S. is not widely popular on the Arab street.
Mr. AL-GIBER: What we've seen is a new generation that's coming of age, that's learning what America is on television. And unfortunately that's not what America is.
BANSE: Al-Giber says the Kingdom plans to award 20,000 scholarships over the next four years. Each one covers full tuition, room and board. One Middle East expert in Washington suggests it would take a bigger breakthrough to reduce ill will significantly, like an end to the Iraq war or an Israeli-Palestinian settlement.
Nevertheless, retired ambassador Phil Wilcox welcomes the Saudi student resurgence.
Mr. PHIL WILCOX (Retired Ambassador): Twenty-thousand more students is a lot of students. Presumably the benefit of higher education in this country, they'll go back into senior positions in business and government and academia in Saudi Arabia. And that'll have a positive change in their society.
BANSE: The first wave of Saudi scholarship recipients this academic year enrolled at colleges in nearly every state of the Union.
Personal recommendations seem to play a big role in picking schools. Twenty-year-old Fajad Al-Moheizi(ph) compared Michigan State and Oregon State and ended up here in Corvallis.
Mr. FAJAD AL-MOHEIZI (Student, Oregon State University): Because my friend told me it's a quiet city, a nice city. The weather is not so bad, except the rain.
BANSE: The moisture and the greenery is actually a major attraction for some of his cohorts. Al-Moheizi says he wasn't concerned about coming to the U.S. because he believes the impulse to equate Arabs with terrorists is gone.
Mr. AL-MOHEIZI: I think everything is cool right now and I am very welcome here, and I feel that Corvallis people is very kindful and nice with me.
BANSE: Al-Moheizi is taking intensive English before pursuing studies in accounting. The director of OSU's English Language Institute, Deborah Healey, is excited to have 88 Saudis enrolled for winter quarter, the most since the early 1980s. They're nearly all male.
Ms. DEBORAH HEALEY (Director, English Language Institute, Oregon State University): It's really a good deal for the state and helps subsidize the domestic students by having other people who pay the full ride. So we are doing our bit to balance the trade deficit.
BANSE: The influx is a nationwide phenomenon. Saudi students are rising fast among the foreign contingents on campuses as diverse as Alabama, Arkansas, Nebraska, and Gonzaga in Washington State.
Administrators say the numbers would have been even higher this winter, were it not for visa troubles. As you might imagine, student visa applicants from Saudi Arabia undergo extensive background checks and must appear for an in-person interview. However, at the same time, consulate staffing on the Arabian peninsula has been reduced due to ongoing security threats.
For NPR News, I'm Tom Banse.
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