On the Road
By Allan E. Goodman

Given all the headlines that originate in the Middle East, good news is rare. But in our field, almost all the news is, in fact, quite positive. Mobility is up: Saudi Arabia now ranks as the tenth leading sender of students to the U.S., increasing by 28% to 12,661, consistent with its substantial investment in government funded scholarships. Students from Jordan (2,225) and the UAE (1,218) have also increased by more than 20 percent and the UAE and Qatar now host over 35% of all the world’s branch campuses. So the region is an important destination for any of us looking at how governments and higher educational institutions can partner to expand international education opportunity.

In June, IIE’s Scholar Rescue Fund held a training workshop in Amman for our Iraq Scholar Rescue Project to help scholars stay connected with Iraqi colleagues and students in the MENA region. With colleagues from the U.S. Embassy, we also held a lively discussion about higher education ties between the U.S. and Jordan, which resulted in substantial articles in the Jordan Times and several Arabic language newspapers and announced the publication of the latest IIE-AIFS Global Research Report on Building the Knowledge Economy in the Middle East.

Several IIE colleagues and I then had the opportunity to explore higher education needs in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and IIE’s Daniel Obst went on to Libya to take part in a planning conference held by the National Economic Development Board to explore the possibility of establishing an "Educational Hub of Excellence" in Libya. It is increasingly clear that there are numerous opportunities for cooperation between education institutions in the MENA region and the United States, and we look forward to continuing close collaboration with our partners and member institutions as we work to meet urgent needs in this area.

Open Doors Spotlight

U.S. students studying abroad                 262,416

Students from Jordan in the U.S.                 2,225

U.S. study abroad to Jordan                           486

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