DOHA: The Ministry of Education and Higher Education has announced that the expected number of scholarship seats within the new government scholarship plan for the academic year 2024/2025is 1,500 seats, compared to 700 seats last year, and attributed this to the increase in the number of educational tracks from 3 to 8 tracks, with the aim of meeting all the needs of the Qatari labour market in the public and private sectors.
This came in an interview conducted by Qatar News Agency (QNA) with Dr Hareb Mohammed Al Jabri, Acting Assistant Undersecretary for Higher Education Affairs at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, during which he reviewed the government scholarship plan, its general directives, its most important features for the academic year (2024/2025), and its goals. represented by economic growth, equal opportunities, diversity and inclusion, and talent development, stressing that the government scholarship is an opportunity for all Qatari students to obtain a government scholarship, provided that the necessary and required conditions are met.
He explained that the ministry’s specialist team studied the scholarship situation, the labour market for all sectors of the country and their needs, noting that for the first time scholarship was concerned with the private sector, after previously focusing on the needs of the government sector.
He pointed out that government scholarships used to depend on selecting universities based on general classification, while now there is a move towards private classification based on tracks, specializations and fields, to ensure the quality of the scholarship programme outputs after completing this journey, at the university level.
He noted that scholarship tracks were previously limited to engineering, medicine and education, while today they include, for the various state sectors, engineering, science and technology tracks, auxiliary medicine, education and educational sciences, postgraduate studies, and social and human sciences, which means that students in the literary track in high school now have opportunities for scholarships, in addition, for the first time, to the creative economy track and the professional track, as well as the sports track as well, all of which feed the labour market and its needs in the public and private sectors.
He also pointed out that he has multiple tracks, and more specializations, especially in the fields of creative economics, social and human sciences, and in the professional and sports tracks, indicating that the Ministry has paid great attention to facilitating the application process for obtaining a government scholarship or for postgraduate studies as well, in terms of greatly reducing the procedures and documents required. than was the case in previous years, in addition to setting new criteria for selecting and approving scholarship requests for postgraduate studies to obtain master’s and doctoral degrees, in addition to setting standards for the concentration of students and the diversity of their presence and studies in different countries, universities, and specializations.
In answer to a question related to the opportunities provided by the government scholarship policy for Qatari students, Dr Hareb Muhammad Al Jabri, Acting Assistant Undersecretary for Higher Education Affairs at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, revealed that between 60 percent and 100 percent have opportunities for government scholarships, which is never before. The selection criteria were focused on academic achievement, which allowed only the distinguished to obtain the scholarship opportunity, but he noted that after reducing the rates of obtaining a scholarship, scholarship became dependent not only on academic achievement, but also on talent, and therefore some talented people were given the opportunity to The sports track, or in the arts and manufacturing tracks, and the vocational track, obtain a scholarship opportunity.
He pointed out that diversity and inclusiveness also included the percentages obtained, so that students of literary, scientific and technological tracks whose percentages range between 60 percentand 100 percenthave opportunities for scholarships, explaining in this context that professional diploma students can be sent abroad with percentages of 60 percentinternally and 70 percentinternally for the (Tamooh) programme or joining the academic bridge, and 80 percentfor internal scholarships for engineering, medicine and allied medicine specializations, and 75 percentfor science, literature and nursing specializations, and 80 percentand above for external scholarship specializations in seven different tracks.
