The National Fund for Higher Education and Training has opened applications for 24 scholarships. Candidates applying for the scholarship scheme will come from various government departments chosen and announced for this year.
According to this article from Haveeru, the Ministry of Higher Education has offered scholarships on the basis that successful candidates on completion of their course must payback 25% of the total cost within a period of 12 years.
Even now Maldives is seeing a brain drain where highly qualified individuals are seeking more challenging and rewarding jobs outside the country. Even if a formal Deed of Agreement is kept between the scholarship applicant and the Government, returning graduates will find that it is not easy for them to payback the 25% of the scholarship within the compensation they earn from one job, either in the public or private sector.
Maldives will also find that in a globalised world, there are many countries in our region and beyond that compete for our top talent. Even now our talent is being lured out of Maldives, and unless our work conditions, compensation, job satisfaction and quality of life are improved dramatically, the exodus will accelerate hollowing important sectors like health care, as more people become highly qualified and are sought after by overseas demand.
Just to give an example of this problem, let us take another developing country: the Philippines. With medical tourism expanding in several in countries, at least 15,000 nurses and other medical professionals are leaving the Philippines each year for better-paying jobs abroad, mainly to United States, Britain and lately to Australia and even Asian destinations, threatening the country's health infrastructure. WHO officials have called it a serious situation for the Philippines. The starting pay for a graduate nurse in government hospital is 10,000 pesos (Sin.$322) about the average wage of a maid in Singapore. Hospitals and administrators in Philippines are grappling to keep up with high leaving rates.
The challenge for our Government will be how to meet from limited financial resources rapidly rising social demands for education scholarships, jobs, infrastructure, health and other social services while retaining our best talent in Maldives.
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