schools and colleges -- run for the most part by religious orders and commercial concerns -- have been abolished and taken over by the state, leading to a unified educational scheme (Esmael, 1983). Thus, Al-Hikma University in Baghdad has been closed and is not listed in Annex 1. Many glowing remarks and descriptions have been made about A.U.B. throughout its history. Qubain (p. 346) states that "This institution has woven itself so intimately into the fabric of life in the Middle East and has made such a deep imprint it is difficult to think of higher education in the area without immediately associating it with the American University of Beirut." In his turn, Szyliowicz (p. 317) wrote that **A.U.D.** and A.U.C. are essentially able "to provide higher quality training and to promote more research than is the case in practically any national institution. They enjoy pre.ter financial resources, have closer contact with scholars in other countries, are more selec ive in admissions, and are able to recruit more able faculty ......" As stated earlier, the unsettling conditions in Lebanon since 1975 have had their impact on A.U.B. in its ability to recruit and, lately, to retain high quality faculty. Furthermore, many new Arab state universities rely on exceedingly superior financial resources which cannot be matched by any private institution. It should also be mentioned that St. Joseph University in Beirut is a very important institution of higher learning in Lebanon, having had a deep influence on the intellectual life of Lebanon and its progress. Faculties of medicine, dentistry, law, and engineering, among others, have been known to be of good quality.

Following the Suez crisis in 1956, Egypt first nationalized British and French schools ard later, in 1958, all foreign schools, and placed controls on the minority schools. Szyliowicz (1973, p. 199) states that

- ... the place of foreign schools in the

- national system of education became increasingly controversial throughout the Arab world as nationalist feelings spread. Missionary schools were criticized for religious proselytizing and some foreign schools, especially the French and Italian, for serving as centers of propaganda for their countries of arigin and for neglecting the teachingof tbe national culture. All foreign schools were accused of contributing to the perpetuation of divisions within the state. Such feelings led to legislation in

every country regdlating the activities of these schools in various ways and bringing them more or less completely under state control....

Such regulations have not been legislated in Lebanon.

Decisions on where students from Arab countries are sent for further training depend upon a number of factors: competence in the language of instruction, financial support from the host country, familiarity -vith the system of education, preferences or biases of governmental or university officials in country of origin, availability of and admission to field of primary interest, and acceptability of foreigners in host country. In order to shed more light on the outlook towards external higher education of the respective Arab countries, an examination was made of the external countries, foreign and Arao, which host students from Arab countries. The data are tabulated in Annex 2, based on the 1986 UNESCO _Statistcal Yearbook,_ indicating the country of origin of foreign students enrolled at higher education institutions in fifty countries selected on the basis of the number of foreign students enrolled. Lack of sufficient information has excluded the Soviet Union, Brazil, Romania, Bulgaria, and Sudan in the Yearbook. In a sense, the information in Annex 2 reflects the major cultural orientation of several Arab countries. The tabulated data are not exhaustive but do represent the higher percentages.

Annex 2 shows that it may have been easier for some Arab countries to break their political ties with former colonial powers than their educational ones. Of a combined 55,830 students from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia studying outside their respective countries, 43,306 or about seventy eight percent studied in France in 1983. The figures for Lebanon and Syria are smaller with twenty nine and sixteen percent respectively of their 1983 students hosted in France. The United Kingdom has been attracting fewer Arab students, with the highest percentages in 1983 coming from Libya (26 percent), Iraq (21 percent), Bahrain (15 percent), and the United Arab Emirates (12 percent). Policies of charging relatively high fees to foreign students may have contributed to a reduction in the number of students from poorer Arab countries studying in the United Kingdom.

The 1984 figures for the United States reflect a special attraction for students of the Arabian Gulf countries of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, _21_