RIYADH — The Ministry of Culture announced on Sunday its decision to grant scholarships to the seventh batch of students under the ministry's Cultural Scholarship Program. With the seventh batch, the number of students who would become beneficiaries of the ministry's scholarship program during the current year reached 211 students. The majority of these students are girls, 133 in number, while male students account for 78. Out of these students, 123 students will pursue their studies for the bachelor's degree while 83 students for the master's degree and five for the doctoral degree. These students will pursue their studies in majors such as food science and technology, theater, music, heritage and archeology, fashion design, libraries and museums, filmmaking, visual arts, literature and linguistics, architecture, culinary arts, and design. The Ministry of Culture launched this unique scholarship program in December 2019 with the aim of developing national cultural cadres specialized in various creative cultural fields in the most prestigious universities, institutes, and academies around the world. The scholarship enables them to qualify to meet the growing needs of the labor market, and achieve the goals of the Kingdom's Vision 2030 in diverse cultural fields. The newly picked students will be enrolled in the most prestigious international educational institutions such as The Culinary Arts Academy; School of the Art Institute of Chicago; The Culinary Institute of America; University of the Arts London (UAL); Pratt Institute; Manchester School of Architecture; Virginia Commonwealth University; The Australian National University; Indiana University Bloomington; University of Edinburgh, and Durham University. More than half of these scholarship students, 115 in number, will enroll in universities and institutes in the United States of America. The US will be followed by the United Kingdom with 56 students; Switzerland 20 students; and Australia 10 students. Two students each will join universities and institutes in Egypt and France while one student each will pursue their studies in Italy, Singapore, and South Korea. This brings the total number of students who joined the ministry's scholarship program to 683 students since its launch in 2019. These include 443 female students and 240 male students. Out of the total students, 384 students pursue studies in bachelor's degree while 291 students for a master's degree and eight for a doctoral degree. Among these students, 277 students are in the United States of America, and the United Kingdom comes next to the US with 290 students, and the UK is followed by Switzerland with 57 students, Australia 31, Egypt 9, France and Italy six each, the Netherlands 3, and two in South Korea. The Cultural Scholarship Program is the first of its kind in the history of the Kingdom in terms of its comprehensiveness and the diversity of its specializations in the cultural and artistic fields, in addition to the multiple benefits, it provides to the scholarship recipients. The state meets all the study costs, financial guarantees, living expenses for the scholarship students and their companions, healthcare, and travel tickets, as well as providing guidance programs that focus on following up on the scholarship and evaluating their academic development. The program focuses on creative specializations within the 16 cultural sectors, offering multiple benefits to students. Through this program, the ministry aims to develop national cultural and artistic competencies to align with the labor market priorities.
