EUR 16 Billion of Scholarships Available in Europe Each Year

BRUSSELS, September 20, 2010 /PRNewswire/ --

- 'Haystack' of Funds now Made Transparent in a Central European Website: ScholarshipPortal.eu

Many students abandon their aspirations to study abroad as they are unable to find appropriate funding, not knowing there is a whole spectrum of scholarships available in Europe. Those scholarships are scattered: offered at European, national, regional and institutional levels. Students are often unaware of their opportunities or struggling to find them. Funded by the European Commission, ScholarshipPortal.eu will come to life to solve this problem.

ScholarshipPortal.eu (http://www.scholarshipportal.eu/) is a centralised European platform providing information on all scholarships offered for studying in Europe. The database already contains over 700 programmes; in total there is an estimated EUR 15.6 billion of scholarship funds available annually. Students can now find and compare relevant programmes based on their nationality, background, where and what they want to study, and more search criteria. The approach is based on the concept of MastersPortal.eu, which already helps over 1 million students every month in their quest among the wealth of Master's programmes in Europe. Financial constraints are the primary reason for 6 out of 10 students not to study abroad.[1] Nevertheless, a wide range of scholarships are offered by 16 different types of sources, from university grants, over regional prizes to bilateral exchange funds.[2] But the absence of a central information source makes it difficult to find suiting funding opportunities.[3] As a solution, ScholarshipPortal has been developed by the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA) together with StudyPortals (http://www.studyportals.eu/), the provider of MastersPortal.eu, and got funded by the European Commission. The ACA is a pan-European network of major national organisations responsible for promotion of higher education mobility. Various members of this network, such as DAAD, Nuffic, OeAD, Universidad.es contribute to the database directly in order to ensure its quality.

ScholarshipPortal.eu will be officially launched at the European Association for International Education (EAIE) conference on 17 September 2010 in Nantes. The ceremony will be lead by Mr. Bjørn Einer Aas as the President of the EAIE.

[1] HIS (2008), Eurostudent III - Social and Economic Conditions of Student Life in Europe, Germany

[2] European Research Associates (2004), Exploring sources on funding for lifelong learning, Luxembourg

[3] ACA (2006), Perceptions of European Higher Education in Third Countries, Belgium

SOURCE Studyportals bv