Ayman Abdelhafez’s agency sends more than 500 students overseas from four locations around Saudi Arabia. He talks about the huge changes the market is seeing after cutbacks in the generous KASP programme and how he’s reaching out to new destinations to stay afloat.
The PIE: Tell me about the growth of your agency, Sindibad.
AA: I established the agency in 2009. The market was growing with a lot of scholarships from the government and a lot of students were interested in studying abroad, so we grew fast.
Today in 2017 we have four offices inside Saudi Arabia, two in the capital city, Riyadh, one in Jeddah, the second biggest city, and one in Khobar.
The PIE: What do your students look for when they go abroad?
AA: When I started there were a lot of agencies in the market who were recruiting for language studies but I wanted to be different.
So I focus on academic relationships with universities and colleges, understanding that students in Saudi Arabia usually need to study English before they go on to academic study. We are still sending students for language, but as a preparation for academic study.
The PIE: What are some of the trends you’re seeing in the Saudi Arabian market and how has KASP affected them?
AA: Since we started in 2009, the scholarship programme was very strong, and Saudi Arabia was very focused on sending as many as possible to study abroad.
“When I started there were a lot of agencies in the market who were recruiting for language studies but I wanted to be different”
There are two types of scholarships: the first type is for those who apply, they meet the requirements, meet the criteria the Ministry of Education is asking for. The ministry accepts them for the scholarship programme and they issue them the financial guarantee. They used to call this KASP and in the last five years, it was sending about 9,000-10,000 students every year.
However, there was another type of scholarship for those who didn’t meet the requirements but still want to study abroad and get the scholarship. The government was really flexible with this type of student – they come to our agency and we give them acceptance for the language through conditional admissions.
Then they travel self-funded, spend maybe a maximum three months, and finish the process to get the scholarship even if their GPA is low or English is very low. We call them the ‘KASP attachment’. They become KASP but they’re not original KASP.
These numbers were even more than the original KASP, maybe like 15,000-20,000 students every year going through this process.
The PIE: What do KASP students do when they finish their degrees?
AA: These huge and generous scholarships were not really a target for getting people degrees, because offering these scholarships in a very easy way was not encouraging students to be really hardworking and quality students.
A lot of those students came back without finishing a degree, or maybe some students spent 18 months studying English in the US and Canada and at the end got 4.5 on the IELTS and is not finding a university to accept him. So the appreciation for what’s offered by the government was not that high. Actually it created a bad image about the Saudi students because a big percentage of those students failed, because they got their scholarship very easily.
But I understand the actual target for the government was not for those students to get the degrees as much as to let these students get exposed to different cultures, to be open-minded, to learn about the outside world, then come back.
Even if they studied only English and didn’t succeed in the degree, they still changed to a better student, and this change was very important because they wanted the Saudis to take part more in the labour market and the businesses.
Saudi Arabia has a lot of expatriates living there, who are running a lot of businesses, or are the engine for the business. But they want to switch and instead of expatriates, they want Saudis.
“KASP created a bad image about the Saudi students because a big percentage of those students failed because they got their scholarship very easily”
The PIE: Why were there so many cutbacks to KASP?
AA: In 2015, huge change started to happen: oil prices went down and Saudi Arabia was fighting in Yemen, consuming a lot of money. As a result, they started thinking we have been sending 15, 20 years of scholarships abroad – the last 10 years we have been sending huge numbers, and these guys are coming back and they ask for jobs with high salaries because they are qualified, they got degrees from abroad. And we cannot afford all that, and the change that we have been seeking in mentality and in the market already happened.
So that was the right time to make this decision to start cutting down. Although officially the government says [KASP] is continuing until 2020, numbers themselves went down. Numbers last year were 2,000 only for the original KASP, and the attachment, is almost zero now.
To get the scholarship [the students] need to finish the whole language component as self-funded, finish the first year of degree as self-funded, maintain a GPA of 3 out of 4 minimum, and get admission to one of the top 100 universities in the world. It’s become really hard to get the scholarship.
The PIE: What effect did the cutbacks have on the market?
AA: As this reduction happened, this number of [agency] clients went down. According to several partners, who have been dealing with a lot of agencies, they said 30-40% of agencies closed. I’ve seen two of them, not that big but well known, close. A lot of agencies depended on the scholarships.
What makes us different is that we have always been looking to the future, not today, not tomorrow but maybe after tomorrow – what will happen, what could happen and how we could deal with it.
The PIE: How have you been trying to future-proof?
AA: Even in 2012, we started making several decisions to protect ourselves from such a situation. When the drop happened in 2015, we were I would say 70% scholarships, 30% self-funded, and even this 30% helped us to survive and recover a little. While everybody was thinking this is the end, we had our own vision.
We found there are people who travel for language as self-funded, there are people who cannot afford to study in countries like the US, Canada or the UK, so they are thinking about more affordable countries. I started talking to universities in China, and visited China several times. I visited Malta. We started targeting new destinations that could be more affordable, and can be an option for students if they are going to pay out of their own pockets.
And we even started thinking about the expatriates living inside Saudi Arabia because no one was thinking about them, everyone was thinking about Saudis because they have the money, but even expatriates living there, they have the money.
“We started targeting new destinations that could be more affordable, and can be an option for students if they are going to pay out of their own pockets”
The PIE: Where are the most popular destinations for Saudi students?
AA: Since we started until today, the US is the number one destination for going abroad. New York is very popular and California is very popular, but Saudi students will think about Ohio, or Oregon or Colorado. They’re still going to Florida or California. It’s a cultural thing, especially those who are travelling with families – they look for more quiet places or more affordable places to live.
But there’s been a big drop for the US. We used to have like 80% of our business going to the US, and the rest divided between Canada, the UK, Ireland, Malta, New Zealand and other countries. What happened is numbers now are around 60% for the US, maybe less, and the increase is happening mainly for Canada and the UK.
The PIE: Why are you seeing less interest for the US?
AA: I think this is because of the new political situation in the USA. It’s not encouraging students in Saudi Arabia to travel there. I had cases myself of students who booked studies in the US and after the American elections, they changed to other countries. Other candidates like Canada and the UK are benefitting from that.
At the same time, the UK is closer to Saudi Arabia, so they will consider going to the UK especially that now they are self-funded. Before, the scholarships did not allow students to go to the UK. For the last three or four years [places] were very limited in the UK. But when you are self-funded, you can choose the country you want.
Plus, there is no change to your money if you want to study in the US, but the US dollar is going up, and sterling pound down, so now the Saudi money is worth more in the UK.
“Students don’t listen to letters from US schools and universities, they listen to the actions which spread on social media”
The PIE: Can the US sector do anything to calm students’ concerns?
AA: I’ve got several letters from schools, from universities, trying to show that we have nothing to do with what is happening politically and we do not agree with it, and the international mix we have is what makes us great.
That’s all great but it doesn’t affect students. Students don’t listen to these words, they listen to the actions which spread on social media. It shows your enthusiasm to the internationalisation of the education in the US but it doesn’t help.
The PIE: What trends do you expect to see in the next few years in the Saudi Arabian market?
AA: Just after the drop in 2015, we witnessed an increase to emerging destinations. For the first time, we sent students in 2016 to the Philippines. For the first time we sent language students to Cyprus. These two destinations were completely new for us. And actually we didn’t reach these destinations because we wanted to send students, we reached these destinations because students asked for it.
On the other hand, you find Greece for students, [they] ask about India, Malaysia, about South Africa, Malta. So there is an increase in the more affordable locations.
Soon Saudi is going to become a normal market where students are the engine not the scholarships, so students can choose whatever they want.
