Revamped Chevening lets scholars have more freedom in choosing their schools

chevening, britain's premier scholarship programme, is in for a major revamp. the british foreign and commonwealth office (fco) is in the process of phasing out shared scholarships and replacing them with open scholarships. shared scholarships currently contribute about half of the fco funded british chevening scholarships programme. these scholarships are offered through individual universities and institutes and hence restrict the choice of the institute for students. on the contrary, open scholarships enable students to pursue short term or long term courses in any uk university of their choice. this year, four new open scholarships have been introduced from the chevening stable. next year there would be a further increase in the number of open scholarships. the programme is being modified with a view to make it more flexible. under the shared scholarship programme, the tuition fee is paid by the fco. the expenses related to accommodation is bourne by the partnering university. universities and institutes also have the authority to decide how they would disburse the awards. currently, about 20 to 30 universities subscribe to the shared scholarships scheme. with the open scholarship programme, the fco will bear the entire cost of the scholarship. this is expected to make the chevening scholarship programme more attractive, despite the fact that this would increase the fco's outflow for scholarships significantly. uk is emerging as the second most popular destination for higher education among indian students. according to sunita kripalani, head of the british council division's education counselling service, this september 6,800 indian students went to the uk. this is an increase of 43 per cent over last year, she says. this is part of uk's strategy to promote the country as a education destination to international students. uk's strategy which was outlined by prime minister tony blair about two years ago is now the leitmotif for all british institutions. blair announced many new measures to increase uk's share in the international education market. one of the plans was to expand the chevening scholarship scheme from its current 2,300 to 3,300 globally in three years time. chevening has a provision for about 125 scholarships in india of which approximately 50 per cent are for short term programmes. in comparison china has 140 fco scholarships. the chevening programme with the commonwealth and the colombo plan offer over three hundred postgraduate scholarships to international students in the uk. about 100 fully funded scholarships are offered by the commonwealth scholarships while the charles wallace india trust provides 50. in addition to this, recently about 60 british universities and colleges got together to offer indian students a package of over 300 scholarships, bursaries and fee discounts worth over £ 7,00,000 (rs 5 crore) every year. these are primarily for undergraduate, further education and 'a' level courses. the scheme is currently in its second year.

Revamped Chevening lets scholars have more freedom in choosing their schools

CHEVENING, Britain’s premier scholarship programme, is in for a major revamp. The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) is in the process of phasing out shared scholarships and replacing them with open scholarships.

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