PUTRAJAYA: 31 World’s Top Universities-bound students received Majlis Amanah Rakyat (Mara) study loan offer letters from Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad here today.
They will be pursuing studies at universities such as the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, University College London and London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom, the University of Michigan in the United States, Technical Ludwig-Maximilians Universitat Munchen in Germany and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Amer Khaled Farid, 20, who will pursue Philosophy Politics and Economics course at the London School of Economics and Political Science, aimed to be a politician capable of changing the national political landscape to be more matured and focused on issues rather than emotional sentiment.
“This is indeed a motivation for me and I will definitely return to Malaysia upon graduation to help develop the country,” he told reporters after receiving the offer letter.
For Itrisyia Dayini Kamarul Baharin, 19, pursuing Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford had been her dream.
“My interest in Middle East history and politics was developed during my years doing the Diploma in History, so I learned a lot about it and wanted to pursue it,“ she said.
Muhammad Jibril Saifullah Kamarul Hisham, 20, who will be pursuing a degree in biochemistry at the University College London, expressed gratitude for the study loan offer as the opportunity to secure a study loan for the course was normally very slim compared to other courses.
If possible, he said he would want to pursue a post-graduate degree in the same field in the United States before returning to Malaysia.
“With the current climate change, we really have to focus more on science,” he said, adding that opening a biotechnology company in Malaysia has been one of his ambitions.
Meanwhile, Mara in a statement said that its World’s Top Universities (WTU) study loan programme was created to provide study loans to excellent students who were offered a place to pursue their first degree at any of the world’s top university.
Mara study loan programme began in 1966 and had so far, benefitted a total of 523,940 students.
This year alone, the government has allocated RM2 billion under the programme and as of May, 37,909 students had been offered loans to pursue their tertiary studies locally and abroad.
Mara WTU programme is an improvement of its existing study loan programme and this year, Mara has also extended the lists of universities to non-native English speaking countries, such as Japan, China, Korea, Russia and Switzerland, the statement said.
The selection of the universities is done based on the best universities rankings issued annually by international academic ranking and rating agencies, it added. — Bernama
