Students warned of bogus scholarships

By Tsungirirai Dhambuza and Charleen Munhenga
GOVERNMENT has urged 2010 Advanced Level students to be wary of bogus foreign scholarship offers and placements, which have mushroomed in Zimbabwe in recent years.
Many firms offering A-Level graduates scholarships and placements at overseas universities and colleges for a fee have sprouted.
Most of these ask the students to pay an application fee ranging between US$10 and US$250.
However, there seems to be no transparency as to who then gets the scholarships.
There is a fear that the “firms” could be ripping off people by making them apply for non-existent services.
The Permanent Secretary for Higher and Tertiary Education, Dr Washington Mbizvo, said many Zimbabwean students were left stranded in foreign lands yearly after they flew out of the country thinking that they had secured a place at a university or a college when they had not.
Dr Mbizvo said, “School leavers should watch out for these rogue foreign colleges because most of them are not recognised by the Higher and Tertiary Education Board.
“We have heard a lot of cases of our children being swindled and ending up stranded in places like Malaysia, India and many others.”
He added: “Any student who wants to go abroad on scholarship should first consult our offices for us to verify the reputation of the people offering the service.
“These people take advantage of our culture of continuous learning and empowerment thus they offer these bogus scholarships.”
With some firms asking for up to US$250 per application, there is a possibility that prospective university students are being ripped off.
The firms are not accountable to anyone to divulge how many people actually benefit from their services yearly and hence there is the possibility that the “application” fees are simply being pocketed and those who will have applied are then told that they were unsuccessful.
The Higher Education Ministry has said there are many reputable firms that indeed offer overseas placements.
Some of them, however, do not cater for transport, visa and accommodation fees, while only paying for tuition.
Last week, a woman who said she had been swindled by a bogus service provider (name supplied), said: “Last year I tried to send my daughter to Malaysia and it was fruitless even after paying large sums of money.
“I had paid more than US$150 in application and interview costs but nothing came out of it.
“I found out later that the application forms were available for free on the Internet. Government must do something because we are being ripped off.”
Officials at the firm in question said they would need clearance from their superior, who was said to be out of the country, to comment on the allegation.
Students who passed the 2010 A-Level public examinations face a daunting task in securing enrolment at the country’s universities.
About 27 000 students sat for A-Level last year and only about a fifth of these can be accommodated at local universities. Normally, about 70 percent of students pass A-Level, but indications are that the pass rate could be even higher this year.
About 5 000 more students wrote public exams last year than in 2009 when some 22 000 candidates were registered. The country’s three biggest universities – the University of Zimbabwe, Midlands State University and the National University of Science and Technology – can only accommodate about 5 000 new students this year.
The Presidential Scholarship Programme caters for a further 1 500 students while other State universities enroll about 2 000 others.
This leaves the majority of last year’s 27 000 candidates without access to local universities while a few families can afford to send their children to study in other countries in the Sadc region or overseas. This can make them susceptible to being preyed on by people offering non-existent scholarships and placements.