Scholarships for foreign students to cease
View(s):The Higher Education Ministry will soon seek Cabinet approval to halt the Scholarship scheme for foreign students, a senior Ministry official said.
The move is due to several reasons including Financial implications of the scheme and also to offer the benefits to Sri Lankan students.
Currently, 140 foreign students benefit from the scheme introduced in 2011.
The official said that the initial objective of the scheme was to promote local universities among the international community, but the objective has not been achieved.
Another reason was that the beneficiaries lacked English proficiency, while the standards of some were not sufficient and they had performed poorly at examinations.
The Financial implication was that the Universities itself had to find the funds to pay Rs 30,000 per student, instead of the Treasury sending the funds. Due to these problems, in recent years, the Ministry curtailed the number of scholarships per year, with only 20 scholarships during bilateral meetings between Sri Lankan President and other heads of state..
He said there were proposals such as offering Scholarships During bilateral meetings between Sri Lankan President and other heads of state.
This will be done when Memorandum of Understandings are signed between Sri Lanka and the countries concerned.
- Damith Wickremasekara