Students granted state scholarships for foreign education

The International Education Centre of Georgia (IEC) has announced they will finance the foreign studies of 110 Georgian students, who will study for Master’s and Doctorate degrees in foreign educational institutions.

The IEC, established in 2014 with the aim to encourage the country’s economic, social and democratic advancement through supporting high-level education, said the financing would cover the 2016-2017 academic year.

The Centre stressed the state fully or partially financed the education fees for the successful applicants, and/or their living expenses.

Agricultural sciences, education, engineering, science, social sciences, humanitarian sciences, law, architecture, public management and management were the priority fields for the recent selection.

The chosen students could continue their studies in British, American, Swedish, German, italian, Czech, Swiss, Hungarian, Estonian and Japanese, universities and institutes.

The precondition for the state support was that after the graduation the students took responsibilities to return to Georgia and use the accumulated knowledge and experience in service of the homeland.

Candidates were selected through a competition, where a special jury composed of staff from Georgia’s state bodies and foreign educational organistaions selected the winners.

Since 2014, the Centre has issued about 270 scholarships.

Georgia lacks qualified staff in many fields, and the state needs a higher quality of education.

In the Soviet era and the years immediately afterwards, a university diploma was necessary both for men and women, as it was believed that without it one would not find a good job nor be able to get married; to some extent this stigma continues to the present day (and is even true in that those without a degree cannot find meaningful employment), but in years past, parents would simply pay money to receive degrees.

This is one of the reasons why Georgia has had so many “qualified people” in various fields whose knowledge bares little resemblance to the gravity of their degrees..

Fortunately, it is now practically impossible for someone to “buy” diplomas. But Georgia requires time and at least one generation of professionals to provide a higher level of education.

In this context, such educational programmes and initiatives are essential.