With drop in oil prices, Wichita State could see fewer Saudi students

For several years, as it struggled to raise enrollment and revenue in a time of state cutbacks, Wichita State University could count on the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia to send its sons and daughters here.

Mustafa Albusaeed and most of the other 318 Saudi students at Wichita State study engineering.

And about 260 of them are supported by Saudi government-sponsored scholarships. For Albusaeed, that has meant $1,800 a month for living expenses and $7,000 a semester for tuition and fees.

Now it looks as though WSU might lose much of its Saudi student pipeline.

Steep declines in oil prices in the past few years have prompted the Saudi government to cut its budget, drastically cutting scholarships that support students who leave their country to get an education.

If WSU were to lose those students and not replace them somehow, said WSU provost Tony Vizzini, it would lose about $4 million in annual revenue – a significant amount for the university as the state keeps cutting public support.

There are about 90,000 Saudi students in the U.S., according to the nonprofit Institute of International Education.

Of all foreign countries, Saudi Arabia sends the fourth-largest number of students to the U.S.

Vince Altum, WSU’s executive director of international education, said that among other changes, the King Abdullah Scholarship Program, which supplies the scholarships, is going to provide them only to students who attend one of the top 100 in an academic listing of American schools.

WSU is not on that list.

Currently, only about 10 percent of Saudi students in the U.S. are enrolled at a top 100 university.

‘Great students’

WSU realized last fall that the number of Saudi students might drop off in coming semesters.

If WSU lets this happen without trying to make up for the loss, “It would be a bad thing for the university,” Vizzini said. The Saudis, he said, “do a lot for our community. They are great students. They bring their culture here.”

Saudi students also bring a lot of money to the U.S. economy – an estimated $1.7 billion, according to the Institute of International Education. In Wichita, the 300-plus Saudi students live here with about 200 family members, all of whom contribute to the economy.

WSU officials are not taking the possible loss of the Saudis lightly. They also are not assuming the worst, Vizzini said.

Some Saudis and many students from other countries are still going to come study engineering and other subjects at WSU, even if they decide to pay their own way and don’t get scholarships from their home country, Vizzini said.

Albusaeed said Vizzini is right about that.

“I like it here a lot,” said Albusaeed, who will earn his mechanical engineering degree in May. “It has been wonderful. I met my wife here (Zahra, a fellow Saudi and a senior studying finance). I have many friends. The students, the staff are all friendly. It’s safe here, compared with other cities. WSU is cheaper than other good schools. And the engineering school is very good.”

He felt that way even when he saw news stories in which politicians or local alumni lashed out at his fellow Muslims in recent months, he said. Some of that negativity bothered him, he said. Some of it was scary.

But if anyone compares the Wichita educational experience with what they might get anywhere else, he said, many Saudis will choose Wichita.

WSU has a reputation as a good engineering school, he said. Competition in his home country to get into those top 100 schools will be tight, so he thinks many students will still pay to come here.

Actively recruiting

Meanwhile, WSU won’t just wait and hope, Vizzini said. The university has sent recruiters to foreign countries for years; Altum himself has been sent to Asia 35 times in his career.

The university is sending recruiters to a number of countries, targeting those they think can make up for the possible loss of the Saudis.

One reason hundreds of Saudis come here to study is that Saudi Arabia is a developing country that needs engineers.

Nepal also is a developing country. “And engineering is a big deal there right now,” Vizzini said.

Altum has sent recruiters to Nepal four times in recent months. This has generated at least 225 applications to WSU from Nepal, he said. Applications don’t always turn into enrolled students, but the work WSU has done in Nepal looks encouraging, he said.

Beyond Nepal, China still sends students here, and WSU still sends recruiters there. Brazil is becoming more important to WSU, so WSU has sent recruiters to six cities in Brazil in recent months. WSU recruiters have also gone to Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Paraguay and other places.

It’s not always engineering that sells those students to come here, Vizzini said. Many Saudis and other international students have come here because Wichita is not a sprawling, urban area. Some international students also come here because it’s a beautiful campus with clean air, he said.

Kansas’ clean air and blue skies are a big selling point to students, for example, from China, “where the air pollution is sometimes so bad that you hold your arm out and can’t see your own fingers,” Altum said.

His recruiters sometimes have trouble persuading potential students from China’s air-polluted cities that the photographs they show them of WSU’s campus and blue sky are real.

For the 2014-15 academic year, 12,020 international students came to Kansas universities, adding $277.6 million to the state economy and supporting 2,755 state jobs, according to NAFSA: Association of International Educators.

This story was originally published April 11, 2016 at 6:32 PM with the headline "With drop in oil prices, Wichita State could see fewer Saudi students."