King’s and CONICYT sign scholarship agreement

On Thursday 16 May, representatives from CONICYT met with Professor Vaughan Robinson, Director of the Graduate School, and Mark Chan Poon, International Marketing Manager, for the official signing of the scholarship agreement. Under this new agreement, students who are sponsored through CONICYT will receive a 15 per cent discount on the tuition fees of PhD programmes and a 10 per cent discount on master’s programmes. Master’s students will also receive a £500 one-off payment.

CONICYT was founded in Chile in 2008, in response to the country’s need for a more productive and creative workforce. The scholarship programme targets the academic, professional and technical sectors with the specific aim to create a workforce that has completed part of their education and training abroad. Since the start of the scholarship programme, CONICYT has funded 4,312 students for postgraduate courses, which includes master’s programmes, PhD studies and Postdoctoral Fellowships. At PhD level, the UK is currently the second choice destination after Spain; at master’s level, the UK is second choice only behind the US.

Professor Vaughan Robinson commented: ’We are delighted to be one of the first universities in London to sign an agreement with CONICYT to recruit Chilean researchers who wish to study for doctorates. This agreement recognises King’s exceptional doctoral completion rates, our world class research and the comprehensive generic and transferable skills training we offer all our doctoral researchers.

‘CONICYT has a very ambitious programme designed to expand and rejuvenate the country’s academic capacity. Central to this are the scholarships they are currently offering to 1800 doctoral researchers studying in universities around the world. This agreement will ensure that King’s plays an active role in this transformation through training, in London, the next generation of Chilean academics at doctoral level. We look forward to sharing our knowledge and expertise with this new cohort of Chilean research students.’

There are currently 30 Chilean students studying across undergraduate, postgraduate taught and postgraduate research programmes at King’s. This also includes a number of study abroad students. Students are pursuing studies in a variety of areas, including Education, Geography, War Studies, Management, Law, Psychiatry, Dentistry, Arts & Humanities, and Biomedical Sciences; 25 of those students are currently sponsored by CONICYT.

Jose Aguilera, President of the scholarship body CONICYT, said: ‘We are delighted to sign an agreement with King’s, one of the top Universities in the UK and world. CONICYT already sponsors a large number of research students to King’s and we expect this number to grow with this agreement between King’s and CONICYT.’

If you are interested to find out more about King’s recruitment activity in Chile and Latin America, please Mark Chan Poon (020 7848 3103), International Marketing Manager for Latin America, Africa, Middle East and Australia. For information on recruitment activity in other regions, please visit the Marketing webpages.

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