Why are the Saudi elites and royalty heading to this small California college?

SF Gate reports.

Tiny Menlo College is like home for Saudi elite

More than half a century ago, a professor from Menlo College in Atherton took a vacation to Saudi Arabia, a struggling young country despite recent oil wealth, and spent many an evening telling Saudi dinner companions about the small, private men’s school specializing in business education.

“The next thing you know, we had the royal family there,” chuckled Dorothy Skala, who worked at Menlo for almost six decades, much of that time as an aide to the traveling professor, John “Judge” Russell, who was head of the business department.

Since the late 1950s, the little-known campus in the wealthy enclave west of Palo Alto has attracted more than 100 members of the Saudi royal family and that nation’s elite: princes, government ministers, bankers and gazillionaires like Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud (Class of ’79), the 34th person on Forbes’ latest list of the world’s richest people.

While Menlo College is no household name to most Americans, its attraction to Saudi nationals foreshadowed a boom in Saudi students studying at colleges across the United States. Since 2010, the number has more than doubled to 54,000, propelling Saudis to become the fourth-largest group of foreign college students in the United States today, according to the Institute of International Education, which tracks such statistics.