Day 3 – our second full day!

It took two days to write this post because we’ve been so busy. Downtime consists of 45 minute breaks where you sleep sitting up to recover from jet lag. There is so much to see in this great country that you never want to sleep anyhow!

Our hosts finally started opening up and their thoughts have been extraordinarily valuable. After each meeting, they help us differentiate truth from fiction. Here are some of the highlights from those conversations and from our meetings on day 2.

#1) the students felt the average Saudi has not experienced the King’s recent reforms. This surprised me because the U.S. press has written extensively about the recent reforms. See http://www.newsweek.com/id/190350.

#2) The youth bulge is making the job market for young Saudi’s extremely challenging. For perspective, 70% of the Saudi population is under 30 years old, and more than 50% is under 20 years old.

#3) Young people find ways around the male-female restrictions. One person said he goes to coffee shops and will “Bluetooth” a girl (i.e. connect to her phone and text back and forth without the religious police or discerning elders noticing). Young people also tend to spend more time with their families and relatives than American teens.

#4) Many of the students openly griped about the lack of equality between males and females.

Some highlights from our Monday meetings:
1) Visited King Saud University to meet with students and faculty

a. Largest university in the Kingdom. 55k male students and 25k female students. It’s ranked #1 in Saudi Arabia, #1 in all of Islam, #27 in the Asian region and #368 in the World.

b. Not only does everyone attend FOR FREE, but if a student maintains a 2.50 GPA, the government gives him/her a $250 USD stipend each month. Boy are we getting a raw deal at Harvard!

c. We spent our time learning about their new entrepreneurship and investments units. This was amazing because Saudi Arabia lacks a culture of entrepreneurship. The program partnered with Kent State University in the U.S. to share faculty and resources. They also secured roughly $35 MM USD in funding from a local Saudi Bank to offer seed financing to new businesses.

d. The program is ranked #1 in the Kingdom and one of the top programs in the entire region.

e. The largest challenges they face are creating a culture of entrepreneurship and making a person ready for the challenges of running a company/commercializing their idea.

f. There was talk about starting a few insurance companies to meet the needs of the Saudi population. The King only recently started permitting the sale of insurance.

g. There were prayer areas scattered throughout the university and classes stop several times a day so both teachers and students can pray.

#2) Visit to the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority
a) wow. what a place with huge ambitions. They are developing 4 major green-field cities from scratch. the largest will be the King Abdullah Economic City.

b) trying to achieve a 10 by 10 goal -- become ranked as a top 10 country by the World Bank and World Economic Forum by 2010 through shifting Saudi Arabia's economy away from oil export dependency toward a knowledge based market system based on it's proximity to join the east and the west together. They are building out downstream oil refining capabilities and constructing one of the world's most complex logistics platforms to transfer shipping containers across land by rail instead of by sea. Went from being #93 in 2004 to #38 in 2006 and #16 in 2008 already!

d) They have an American women running all education reform efforts for SAGIA. She led a healthy discussion on the implication of the youth buldge and Saudi's per capita spending efforts on education.

e) King Abdullah Economic City - will create 1 MM jobs and Saudi Arabia's third port. It will have industrial, business, resort, education, and residential zones.


#3) Visit to King Faisal Research Center and Islamic Studies


#4) Visit to the King Abdulaziz library and meeting with Secretary General H.E. Faisal bin Muammar

Will finish post later.
- AC