Basua spells out TESAS

THE confusion over the Government’s tertiary education student assistance scholarship (TESAS) and its applied quota system has prompted Minister for Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology, David Basua to clarify the current scholarship status.
Mr Basua yesterday announced that the main criterion for the TESAS award was academic merit which was limited by the quota imposed by the Office of Higher Education.
He said there were two sets of quota systems involved in the award of scholarships.
One is the course programmes or enrolment quota imposed by institutions of higher education like university or college and the other is the TESAS award quota for each programme of study imposed by OHE.
He said the minimum GPA for eligibility of TESAS award was 1.6, however, the following could happen:
*Institutions can admit more students than the quota for award – an example would be, if an institution admits 30 students into a programme of study and OHE has 15 awards for this programme, only the top 15 students with high GPAs will be awarded the scholarships. It is possible that the top 15 students may have GPAs of 2.0 or above; and
*Few students are admitted into less popular programmes of study which means if an institute admits 10 students into the programme of study, which has places for 20 students, and the OHE has 15 awards for this programme, the 10 students will all receive the awards provided their GPAs are 1.6 or above.
Mr Basua said the OHE quotas were based on the level of funding appropriated by the Government each year for the set awards quota.
It is obvious students who score a GPA of 1.6 will not benefit from the A and B scholarship categories of the TESAS.
He said the trends over the last three years showed that most TESAS scholars score a GPA of 2.3 and above.
This year, the Government committed K30 million for TESAS awards to which OHE announced last month would benefit over 8,000 students from universities and colleges.
“The OHE maintains a small loans programme. We encourage students admitted to institutions and who do not benefit from the TESAS to make use of the TESAS loan scheme,” Mr Basua said.

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