The Importance of International Education to Development in the Middle East

Why are American institutions so focused on the Middle East?

In the tradition of the universities of the Middle Ages, today’s universities bring together a diversity of peoples from many countries as scholars and students. Approximately twenty thousand students, representing more than seventy nationalities and most of the world’s confessional groups, are attending classes at the four American universities in the Middle East this year. Among the matriculated are the future leaders of their societies and the world. They are studying medicine, pharmacology, architecture, modern communications, law, information technology, business administration, modern languages, economics, and government - all key to advancing development in their societies and integrating them into a world of wider opportunity. They are learning to build bridges, literally and figuratively.