Riyadh institution will accommodate 40,000 students; move part of Saudi leader's bid to improve women's education throughout kingdom. (The Media Line)
By THE MEDIA LINE NEWS AGENCYking abdullah 224.88(photo credit: AP)
Saudi Arabia is setting the cornerstone for a new campus at a university exclusively for women.
Riyadh's Women's University is designed to become the largest institution for higher education for women in the world and will have the capacity to accommodate up to 40,000 students.
It currently accommodates 17,000 students, University President Princess Al-Jawhara Bint Fahd said.
The university will include 13 colleges providing studies in medicine, dentistry, nursing, naturopathy, pharmacology, physiotherapy, computers, administrative sciences and translation, and is expected to be completed by 2010, the Saudi daily ArabNews reported.
Saudi King 'Abdullah Bin 'Abd Al-'Aziz is laying the cornerstone for the new campus on Wednesday.
The declared aim of the Women's University is to promote women's education in the kingdom, improve the situation of Saudi women and make them a more integral part of Saudi Arabia's development.
The university has tailored its educational programs to meet the requirements of the job market.
Activists for women's rights in the Saudi kingdom have praised the king's efforts over the past few years to empower women and welcome them into the job market.
However, there are religious, social and traditional obstacles that make ambitions such as increasing access to higher education for women difficult.
Saudi Arabia practices a strict form of Sunni Islam called Wahhabism, and men and women are for the most part segregated. In universities, male lecturers cannot stand in front of a classroom of women, so teaching is done through a screen or a phone line, which can pose technical problems.
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