One of the more prominent hospitality groups in Asia, Hong Kong-based Compass Hospitality Co. Ltd., has signaled its entry into the Malaysian market by setting up the Compass Scholarship Foundation with Taylor’s University College.

An initial RM500,000 has been allocated for Malaysian students to study at Taylor’s University College, which is supposed to be enough for 150 students.

Further details are not available yet, but the scholarship will certainly be tied to a job with Compass - whether via a bond or otherwise. I’ll post an update when I get more details.

If you’re a Chemical Engineering student who is looking to apply to a New Zealand university, you might want to take into consideration the 1-year financial aid offered by the University of Canterbury to its second-year students.

Admittedly, a one-off award of up to $3,000 in your second-year at the university isn’t much, but it sure beats nothing if you have few alternatives (obvious I know).

In any case, students who are eligible for the Lee Foundation Award are Malaysian and Singaporean students who have completed at least a year at the University of Canterbury and are not New Zealand citizens or permanent residents. Of course, you must also need the financial help.

More information available at the university’s website.

Here’s a niche scholarship that was launched a few months back by Sapulut Forest Development Sdn Bhd. The scholarship is for students of Sabah origin to read a BSc. degree in Forestry or other Forestry-related programmes at University Malaysia Sabah.

As you would expect, the award fully covers tuition fees and at partly covers living expenses, including textbooks, stationary and transportation.

This year (2007/08), two scholarships were awarded. More information on this scholarship will be posted when they are available.

This post comes very late not only because Merdeka was almost two weeks ago, but also because the scholarship application date, i.e. the 30th of August, has already ended. In any case, better to spotlight it now just in case the Association of Banks Malaysia (ABM) decides to renew this programme (or a similar version of it) next year.

The ABM Merdeka Scholarships were meant for final year students with CGPA of 3.5 and above at local tertiary institutions, and were valued at RM10,000 each. Not unsurprisingly, applicants were also not supposed to be in receipt of any other scholarships or financial aid since there was a possible 1-year bond attached to the scholarships.

I’ve to admit that I felt that the bond was actually a good thing considering that it gets you a place in one of the sponsoring banks (which by the way include foreign banks like JP Morgan, ABN Amro and Standard Chartered, and most of the local banks).

For more information, refer to the ABM brochure (.pdf file) on the scholarships.

Those who have suffered before always find ways to prevent others from undergoing the same fate. But more often than not, we think only about our offspring. Luckily, this was not so for Mr. Wong, a Singaporean self-made millionaire, who recently donated S$1 million to the Singapore Management University (SMU) to establish the Wong Kwok Leong Endowed Scholarship.

Starting from next year (i.e. 2007/08), at least 3 one-year scholarships valued at $10,000 each will be awarded annually under this programme to capable SMU students who face financial difficulties. This means that besides the usual academic and co-curricular requirements, the per capita monthly household income of the applicant must not exceed S$900.

While the scholarships are bond-free, scholars are expected to plan and execute a fund-raising proposal for charity, in close consultation with Mr. Wong.

Further details have not been made available by SMU at the time of writing of this post.

[News via SMU]

The results of this year’s Great Eastern Supremacy scholarship application process has been released - with 15 students being awarded scholarships ranging from RM6,000 (for local scholarships) to RM50,000 (for overseas scholarships).

The 15 scholarships, for various fields including actuarial science, economics, international affairs and the natural sciences, have been valued at RM735,600, indicating that most of the scholarships awarded were for overseas study - an immensely positive sign indeed.

Of course, it goes without saying that recepients of the scholarship should thank Great Eastern’s strong financial performance in recent years more than anything else.

[News via Bernama]

Yeah, a no-brainer - but only to us students it seems. That’s why you guys visit this blog, eh? But private universities all around the world (e.g. Australia, Britian, New Zealand) don’t seem to get it, and are trying harder than ever to “catch up” to American tuition fee standards (think US$30,000+ per annum, and that’s not the biggest figure you’ll see). Let’s also not forget that it’s far worse for us Asian students with relatively weak currencies (we’ve returned to the dreaded era of RM7:£1 already).

Admittedly, it’s not always their fault. The trend towards cost sharing or even full-scale privatisation, as well as the need for more investment to compete with US universities, has required university finance departments to start pulling their weight, and what can any educational institute do in the short and medium term to escape the dreaded red numbers but raise tuition fees?

And there really isn’t much reason for them to stop raising their fees. The demand for foreign education in developing countries and even industrialised ones (like Singapore) is rising and will continue to do so until local tertiary institutes reach the standards students can be happy with. And even if governments manage to get something like this done (yes, a big if here, especially regarding the M’sian Govt’s 2010 dream), there’ll never be enough space for everybody.

But is cost going to discourage ambitious students from going overseas? Not any time soon I think, especially given the increasing affluence of developing countries and the full committment of some countries (Read: Malaysia and Singapore) to their overseas scholarship programmes.

Now that’s one long title. So, I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I refer to it using its acronym (MUPSA EEP) instead (still pretty long, isn’t it?). Anyway, Microsoft Malaysia - the Malaysian subsidiary of the World No. 1 OS vendor - gave out 292 scholarships under the MUPSA EEP to students under the Lions Club of CyberCare eCommunity programme last year.

These scholarships were based on academic merit, and were given out to students from 90 homes under the Lions Cubercare network. Each award consisted of both cash and cheque awards from Microsoft - all of which scaled according to the number of distinctions the student obtains.

Besides general awards to high achieving students, there is also a provision for the very best students in each category of Malaysian government exams. For example, there are Best Student awards for UPSR, PMR, SPM and STPM examinations. There is also an award for the Best Home, based on the number of award recepients it has each year.

[News via Star Online]