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A total of 657 outstanding students, comprising 442 local and 215 non-local students, are benefiting from the HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund in the 2011/12 academic year.
These include 514 publicly-funded degree or above level students and 143 students studying publicly-funded sub-degree programmes.
This is the first year the Scholarship Fund has awarded scholarships to sub-degree students, following the Government's injection of $250 million into the Fund in 2011 to extend the benefits to students of full-time publicly-funded sub-degree programmes offered by five institutions. The amount of scholarship distributed is $3 million.
This is also the fourth year the Scholarship Fund has awarded scholarships to outstanding students taking full-time publicly-funded degree or above programmes in nine participating institutions. Over $29 million was allocated to 294 local and 220 non-local students.
The Acting Secretary for Education, Mr Kenneth Chen, congratulated the recipients at a scholarship certificates presentation ceremony today (April 12).
The HKSAR Government Scholarship Fund was established in 2008 as a key initiative to foster the development of Hong Kong as a regional education hub.
The scholarships are $40,000 a year for each local student and $80,000 for each non-local student studying full-time publicly-funded programmes at degree or above level.
The scholarship award for sub-degree students is between $20,000 to $30,000 per year for both local and non-local students. The scholarships are awarded according to a set of criteria including academic performance, community service, leadership and communication skills.
In the 2012/13 academic year, total scholarship allocation to publicly-funded degree or above level and sub-degree students will be around $42 million and $9 million respectively. In addition, up to 10 targeted scholarships will be offered to first-year non-local full-time students from ASEAN countries, India and Korea, who are enrolled in publicly-funded degree programmes in Hong Kong. The targeted scholarships will cover students' full tuition fees.
In the 2012-13 Budget, the Financial Secretary proposes to inject $1 billion each into the Scholarship Fund and Self-financing Post-secondary Education Fund to establish more scholarships or award schemes for outstanding students. It is expected that new scholarship schemes could be implemented in the 2012/13 academic year.
The 10 participating institutions are the City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Baptist University, Lingnan University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and the Vocational Training Council.
Ends/Thursday, April 12, 2012
Issued at HKT 15:27
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