The UK arm of Peru’s PRONABEC postgraduate scholarship programme was launched earlier this month, and is expected to fund 200 Peruvian postgraduate students to study at UK universities per year.
Managed by the UK Higher Education International Unit, the programme will see over 70 UK universities eligible to host the incoming postgraduate students under the “President of the Republic” scholarship.
“It seems like an excellent moment to try and make some new connections between UK institutions”
The students will be fully funded by Peru’s National Programme for Scholarships and Educational Loans, PRONABEC.
The IU will be available for contact at any point of the process, to provide prospective students with information including entry requirements and the application process.
“Our job is to make the process as smooth as possible for PRONABEC scholars,” Vivienne Stern, director of the International Unit, told The PIE News.
“We have a dedicated enquiry point and we have a team of staff who will support students from Peru who want to take advantage of this scholarship.”
The agreement was signed during a delegation to Peru and Ecuador, consisting of 15 UK universities and IU representatives.
Stern said the purpose of the trip was to “signal that the UK wants to be a partner of choice for Ecuador and Peru as they invest in improving their own higher education capacity”.
“Both of these countries are going through quite significant higher education reforms, thinking hard about how they can improve quality of higher education,” she said, adding that “it seems like an excellent moment to try and make some new connections between UK institutions and a part of the world where frankly there isn’t an awful lot of collaboration going on.”
The delegates also met with a range of Ecuadorian and Peruvian universities, to strengthen collaboration between institutions, as well as a number of government ministries.
Stern said other collaborations may also emerge from the delegation.
“There’s some very interesting things that we were talking about around for example innovation, university business links, around initial teacher training,” she said.
“I think we’ll be pursuing those conversations over the next couple of weeks.”
