News item | 28-11-2023 | 06:00
From next academic year, around 120 students per year can go on an exchange or internship within the Kingdom with the so-called Kingdom Scholarship. This is a new mobility program for all students within the Kingdom, intended to increase short-term student exchanges. The first five Caribbean students recently started with such a Kingdom Scholarship in the Netherlands. This academic year, approximately 25 students are expected to use it in total. The Kingdom Scholarship is one of the measures to support Caribbean students in their study career.
It is important to work on improving the study success of Caribbean students. Recent research shows that a switch of study in both university and higher professional education is (much) higher among students with previous education from the Caribbean part of the Kingdom than among students who followed their previous education in the European Netherlands. In university education, the dropout rate in the first year is highest among students from the Caribbean part. Many Caribbean students encounter additional stumbling blocks in further education in the Netherlands, for example. For example, the step towards studying in the Netherlands is very large, which leads to a relatively high dropout rate. Caribbean students also face many practical problems, such as finding housing and obtaining a BSN.
Prevent failures and disappointments
The Kingdom Scholarship is a new mobility program for all students within the Kingdom: MBO, HBO and WO. The program should increase the short-term exchange of students within the countries of the Kingdom. So, for example, a student who comes from the Netherlands to University of Curaçao Dr. Moises Da Costa Gomez (UoC), or an Aruban student who will do an internship in the Netherlands. It enriches their study career and offers Caribbean students in particular the opportunity to first try out, with financial support, whether studying in the Netherlands suits them before opting for a full course. Students take courses at an institution in the Netherlands for a maximum of six months. The aim is to prevent dropouts and disappointments if a full further education were to be chosen immediately. In doing so, it contributes to the study success and equal opportunities of Caribbean students. Fewer dropouts also reduce the student debt problems that many of these students face. This hinders the return to the island of origin and thus causes brain drain. The Kingdom Scholarship makes it more attractive to continue studying on your own island and go on a short exchange.
Minister Dijkgraaf: “It was very inspiring to recently meet the first students with a Kingdom Scholarship. The introduction of this scholarship is an important and concrete step towards greater perspective, study success and equality of opportunity for Caribbean students. With this exchange program we use the strength of the four countries of the Kingdom.”
‘Erasmus+’ within the Kingdom
The Kingdom Scholarship can be compared to the Erasmus+ program, which offers students the opportunity to follow a semester at a European institution with financial support. With Erasmus+, as a student from Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, the Netherlands or the BES islands (Bonaire, Saba, Sint Eustatius) you can go to all European countries for an exchange or internship with a grant, but that is not possible. inside the kingdom. The grant amounts are comparable to Erasmus+, the subsidy scheme (which has just gone into internet consultation) states that Caribbean students can receive a grant of up to 5,900 euros.
This academic year, a total of around 25 students are expected to use the new grant as a pilot. The aim is that from the 2024-2025 academic year, around 120 students per year will benefit from the Kingdom Scholarship. The Netherlands is allocating a total of 0.6 million euros for the new mobility program. Students have until May 1, 2024 to apply for a scholarship starting in September 2024.
Increase study success
The Kingdom Scholarship is one of the measures to increase the study success and equality of opportunity of Caribbean students. The subject was high on the agenda of the Ministerial Four-Country Consultation on Education last week in The Hague, this time chaired by the Netherlands. The ministers have agreed that a program team will be established that will structurally tackle the improvement of study success over the next three years.
To increase students’ chances of success in further education, the four countries have also created the Caribbean Academic Foundation Year. This is a joint pre-academic year to better prepare students for higher professional education and university education. This should make the transition from secondary education to further education smaller, on an academic and personal level. The educational offering on the islands is also examined. The first step in this is a labor market analysis in which the shortages on the labor market are mapped out for the Caribbean region.