New Scotland’s Saltire Scholarships for EU students

Scotland’s Saltire Scholarships allow students to study in a country with a long academic tradition. They are offered by the Scottish Government in collaboration with Scottish universities and colleges.

The scholarships have been already available to applicants from countries outside Europe such as Canada, China (including Hong Kong), India, Japan, Pakistan and USA and now a new Saltire Scholarships scheme is introduced to help students from EU countries to study in Scotland.

The Scottish Government allocated GBP 2.25 million to fund eligible higher education courses for students applying from the European Union looking to study from January 2022. The funding has been allocated to universities and colleges through the Scottish Funding Council and the amounts vary depending on various factors such as the institution’s percentage shares of sector EU student numbers and others.

Scholarships will be considered by universities for postgraduate programmes of Master’s-level and colleges will consider applications for Higher National (HN) level, Higher National Certificate (HNC) or Higher National Diploma (HND) courses.

The decrease of application of EU students due to Brexit has been significant.

According to the latest data from UCAS, the Scottish universities have seen a 41 % decrease in the number of EU students applying to study this academic year.

Minister for Higher and Further Education, Jamie Hepburn, said about the applications: “In the last year we have sadly seen a dramatic reduction in applications from EU students looking to study here, we are determined to do all we can to reverse the damage caused by Brexit and promote Scotland’s education offer globally”.

He also said that EU students made an absolutely vital contribution to the economy, educational environment and society as a whole and the scholarship programme is introduced to help strengthen and fix connections between the EU and Scotland.