the approach taken in the saudi education system has been accused of encouraging islamic terrorism, leading to reform efforts. following the 9/11 attacks, the government aimed to tackle the twin problems of encouraging extremism and the inadequacy of the country's university education for a modern economy, by slowly modernising the education system through the "tatweer" reform program. the tatweer program is reported to have a budget of approximately us$2 billion and focuses on moving teaching away from the traditional saudi methods of memorization and rote learning towards encouraging students to analyze and problem-solve. it also aims to create an education system which will provide a more secular and vocationally based training.