The number of Saudi students in the US has reached a record high of 111,000 this year, up from 10,000 in 2007, a report said.

More than 600 students from Saudi are studying medicine, the Arab News report added, noting that Saudi students could enroll in the King Abdullah Foreign Scholarship Program for higher studies abroad.

The Department of Commerce in the US said that international students have contributed to revive the US economy with $22.7 billion in 2011. “The number of Saudi students increased by 50 percent in 2011 alone,” local media said.

Since the most preferred destination for Saudi students is the US, the government has raised the financial allocations of the education sector by 21 per cent from the amount it had assigned in 2012, the report said.

Education spending accounted for 25 per cent of the Kingdom’s public spending for the year 2013.

“The Kingdom has allocated SR10 billion ($2.66 billion) to send Saudi students to the US,” Farooq Al-Kateeb, a former professor of economics at the King Abdul Aziz University, was quoted as saying in the report.