Saudi Arabia looks to the future, opens coed university.
Saudi Arabia’s new $10 billion, state-of-the-art science and technology university welcomes the country’s first coed student body Wednesday in one of the king’s keystone attempts to power his country into the 21st century with renewable energy and social reform.
The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology on the Red Sea coast boasts one of the world’s fastest supercomputers, state-of-the-art “green” technologies and a team of top scientists timed its launch for Saudi Arabia’s National Day.
“This international research university is a contribution from Saudi Arabia to promote knowledge,” King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud told a meeting of the Council of Ministers at al-Safa Palace last week.
The energy-efficient university, equipped with the latest technology and some of the world’s top scientists, is set to break both scientific as well as social barriers. And with one of the world’s largest educational endowments it hopes to attract students and faculty from around the world with funding for 2,000 graduate students.
aziz 8:00 am on September 23, 2009 Permalink |
John Burgess is actually in Saudi Arabia for the grand opening and is filing reports at his indispensable blog, Crossroads Arabia.
Naila 12:53 am on September 24, 2009 Permalink |
About freaking time. The fact that while the Arab nations are awash in financial wealth, less financially capable countries like China, Taiwan, and even Vietnam, have raced on to the 21st century by becoming the foremost producers of intellectual wealth, a resource that is eternally renewable, unlike oil.
Naila 12:53 am on September 24, 2009 Permalink |
…sentence fragment.
Time to sleep, I think.