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Call for one entity to unite scholarships
ABU DHABI - The country needs to have one entity to coordinate all scholarship programmes in the country, said a senior official.
Dr Ali Al Arai, Director of The Scholarship Office (SCO) under the Ministry of Presidential Affairs (MoPA), said that with the number of government and semi-government organisations offering scholarship grants to Emirati students, there should be one department to coordinate all these efforts.
“There needs to be one (entity) to coordinate scholarships, where different institutions can exchange ideas, information about the country, major specialities, what the students are going to study, what universities they are studying in, and also to consider the needs of the country,” Dr Al Rai suggested.
The SCO manages the Distinguished Students Scholarship (DSS) or the President’s Scholarship, and the Study Abroad Scholarship Programme (SASP) for Abu Dhabi. The SCO selects outstanding Emirati students every year to pursue higher education in key sectors at any of the top 25 universities worldwide.
“At the moment there is no such (entity), everyone is doing their own thing. We are complementing each other, that’s all, but there is no one umbrella that cover all the scholarship and coordination. It doesn’t matter which (government) umbrella so long as there is coordination,” he said.
Dr Al Arai was speaking on Monday on the sidelines of the first forum for Academic Exchange Coordination in the Capital. According to Nasser Thani Al Hameli, assistant undersecretary from the technical office of the Deputy Prime Minister and MoPA, there are over 20 establishments and organisations offering scholarships in the UAE.
These include the federal offices such as the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and MoPA, local entities including the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), and companies like the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC). He noted that since 1972, when the country started sending students abroad, the number of scholars have “rapidly increased to about 8,000 students or about 15 per cent of the total number of UAE national students joining higher education.”
Speaking at the forum, Professor Chew Soon Beng, professor of Economics and Industrial Relations at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, underscored the importance of government-sponsored scholarship in developing a country’s human capital.
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