Full fees on offer to Saudi health students

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Scholarships for students aim to boost numbers of local healthcare staff in KSA. (Getty Images)

Saudi Arabian students who want to become healthcare professionals are being invited to apply for 100% scholarships to study at private universities and colleges in the Kingdom.

Applicants, who must demonstrate high grades, can begin applying this month and throughout October for a third wave of government-funded scholarships that pay full tuition fees.

The scholarship is capped at SR60,000 (US$16,000) per year for those studying medicine and dentistry and SR50,000 ($13,331) for students accepted on to pharmacology, nursing, physical and applied science courses.

The initiative was launched by the Saudi Arabian government in 2006, specifically for students attending private universities and colleges. All publicly run higher education courses are already free.

It was introduced to boost the number of nationals working in healthcare. Saudis currently only account for 19% of the workforce, according to Ministry of Health statistics.

Dr Khaled Al-Kattan, dean of the College of Medicine at the privately-run Al Faisal University said: "Medicine and health services are among our top priorities, hence the government is encouraging graduate and postgraduate programmes, both by government and private institutes."

"The scholarship is one of the many supports to private higher education."

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