Kuwaiti student boost for University

The Kuwaiti government has agreed to sponsor up to 65 Kuwaiti students every year for the next five years at the University of Malta in various disciplines, including the Doctor of Medicine, Dental Surgery, Pharmacy and Engineering courses.

Most of the students are expected to be for the medical areas, which are the University's most expensive courses.

The decision is a significant financial boost for the University. The fee for students from non-EU countries such as Kuwait who start the five-year Doctor of Medicine and Surgery course this October is €24,000 per year. For those starting the course in October 2011, the annual fee will go up to €25,000. The equivalent fees for the Dentistry course are €21,000 and €22,000 respectively.

For the past eight years the University has been receiving about eight Kuwaiti students each year through the Kuwaiti Ministry of Higher Education's scholarship programme. The University now hosts a total of 60 Kuwaiti scholarship students, of which 22 are in various years of the Medicine and Dentistry courses.

A number of Kuwaiti students are currently following a one-year Foundation Studies programme to enrol on these degree courses in October while others are preparing for the Architecture, Engineering and Computer Science degrees. Starting this year, part of the preparation also involved attending courses at the University's English language school on campus.

Fayez Al Kandari, Cultural counsellor at the Paris-based Embassy of Kuwait, and University rector Juanito Camilleri will tomorrow afternoon sign a five-year agreement on collaboration between the University and the Kuwaiti ministry. The signing ceremony will be held at the Aula Magna of the Old University Building, Valletta, followed by short presentations and an exhibition on Kuwait set up by the students.

Besides the committment to sponsor students the agreement will also seek to promote collaboration in higher education and research through exchange of information and mobility of lecturers and researchers.

Malta and Kuwait established diplomatic relations in 1972, and the link with the University was set up by Prof. Camilleri's predecessor Roger Ellul Micallef, who worked in Kuwait between 1978 and 1982, first as an associate professor at the University of Kuwait and later as chairman of that university's Department of Pharmacology. He also acted as consultant to the Kuwaiti Ministry of Health at the time.

Malta and Kuwait signed co-operation agreements on education, culture and scientific research co-operation in 2002 and again in 2005.

Last year, the Kuwaiti government had also expressed interest in health co-operation by bringing Kuwaiti doctors to Malta for training, flying Maltese doctors to the Gulf state to train local doctors and carry out surgical operations there, and in sending cardiac and oncology patients to receive treatment at Mater Dei Hospital.