News from Guangdong Provincial Education Department is that during the 2007 academic year, the finance departments at various levels in Guangdong Province will arrange a special stipend totaling RMB1.47 billion to provide financial help to students from poor families.
According to Li Xiaolu, deputy director of GPED, the new system is an improvement to the existing national scholarship system and it has added a national incentive scholarship and expanded the coverage of the national stipend. In particular, the national scholarship will be available to all college students, particularly academically excellent students, and each of them will receive RMB8000 each year. The national incentive scholarship will be awarded to students who are from poor families but achieve excellent academic records, and each of them will receive RMB5000 per year. The National Stipend is used to support full-time college and university students from poor families, but the detailed amount each of the student will receive each year has not been disclosed.
The report says that from the fall semester of 2007, more than 20% of the total students in Guangdong's universities are expected to enjoy this financial support.
In addition, Guangdong Province has begun to cooperate with China Development Bank to offer loans for needy students. By the end of June, a total of 34500 students from the first batch of 88 institutions of higher learning in the province had received RMB189 million in bank loans. China Development Bank Guangdong Branch says they have prepared another RMB800 million loan for the poor students for the coming term.
