STUDENTS are to receive a €12 million aid package with vouchers for food, housing, transport and equipment Education Minister Andreas Demetriou announced yesterday.
The programme will begin for the new academic year starting in September this year and applies to students of public and private universities, he said.
“The measures are targeted and designed to enable the ‘weaker’ groups to study in Cyprus with no difficulties,” said the Minister.
He said the aim of the €12 million package was to enhance and extend student care coverage based on socioeconomic criteria and the needs of undergraduate students studying at public universities, public higher education schools and private universities in Cyprus, as well as Cypriot undergraduate students studying abroad.
The approved package includes an increase in funds to the Cyprus State Scholarship Foundation (IKYK) to strengthen the scholarship programmes and also create new ones that will grant scholarships for undergraduate study abroad to students based on their socioeconomic status.
The scholarships ranging from €3,000 to €4,000 will aim to cover costs for rent, food, books and the purchase or upgrade of a computer. Ten percent of Cypriot undergraduate students studying abroad will benefit from this scheme.
Funds will also be given to the Higher Hotel Institute Cyprus and the Cyprus Forestry College, and private universities, amounting to €3,657,000 to subsidise student housing.
The students of the University of Cyprus will benefit greatly from the scheme as 230 rooms/apartments will be added to the existing 200.
Limassol’s Technological University (TEPAK) will get 80 more apartments on top of the existing 70. As regards to the private universities, funding will be given after consultation with the Education Ministry once it is established that these universities have developed the necessary mechanisms for student accommodation in order to implement the measures.
The Dean of the University of Cyprus Stavros Zenios said: “The package is a positive development. In a society which aims to create higher education at a European level, we need to invest in the universities-public and private, turn them into centres of excellence, sensitive to measures of social cohesion.”
“The objective must be that as many students as possible should attend universities without letting the financial difficulties of certain classes to be an obstacle,” he added.
House Education Committee Chairman Nicos Tornaritis of DISY said: “The first steps taken are in the right direction however we have not heard what we were all waiting to hear over increasing student sponsorship as President Christofias promised in his pre-election campaign”.
Other handouts under the scheme include annual food vouchers worth €1,000 each to 970 undergraduate students at the University of Cyprus and TEPAK.
They also include vouchers worth €500 for the purchase of academic books worth to 2,505 undergraduate students at the University of Cyprus, TEPAK, public higher education colleges and private universities, and a €200 subsidy for the purchase of a bus card for unlimited routes in Nicosia and Limassol for 5,025 undergraduate. This amount covers 50 per cent of the annual cost to students.
Students will also receive a €500 grant for the purchase or upgrade of a computer, a handout that will benefit over 4,000 students in the next three years.
Representatives of Student union POFEN and students of the University of Cyprus welcomed the package. “For the first time the creation of measures were on the mark and meet the students’ demands that were pending for decades,” a brief statement from student unions said.
