EUR 16 Billion of Scholarships Available in Europe Each Year

'Haystack' of Funds now Made Transparent in a Central European Website: ScholarshipPortal.eu

BRUSSELS, September 20, 2010 - Many students abandon their aspirations to study abroad as
they are unable to find appropriate funding, not knowing there is a whole
spectrum of scholarships available in Europe. Those scholarships are
scattered: offered at European, national, regional and institutional levels.
Students are often unaware of their opportunities or struggling to find them.
Funded by the European Commission, ScholarshipPortal.eu will come to life to
solve this problem.

ScholarshipPortal.eu (www.scholarshipportal.eu/) is a centralised
European platform providing information on all scholarships offered for
studying in Europe. The database already contains over 700 programmes; in
total there is an estimated EUR 15.6 billion of scholarship funds available
annually. Students can now find and compare relevant programmes based on
their nationality, background, where and what they want to study, and more
search criteria. The approach is based on the concept of MastersPortal.eu,
which already helps over 1 million students every month in their quest among
the wealth of Master's programmes in Europe.

Financial constraints are the primary reason for 6 out of 10 students not to
study abroad.[1] Nevertheless, a wide range of scholarships are offered by 16
different types of sources, from university grants, over regional prizes to
bilateral exchange funds.[2] But the absence of a central information source
makes it difficult to find suiting funding opportunities.[3] As a solution,
ScholarshipPortal has been developed by the Academic Cooperation Association
(ACA) together with StudyPortals (www.studyportals.eu/), the provider
of MastersPortal.eu, and got funded by the European Commission. The ACA is a
pan-European network of major national organisations responsible for
promotion of higher education mobility. Various members of this network, such
as DAAD, Nuffic, OeAD, Universidad.es contribute to the database directly in
order to ensure its quality.

ScholarshipPortal.eu will be officially launched at the European
Association for International Education (EAIE) conference on 17 September
2010 in Nantes. The ceremony will be lead by Mr. Bjørn Einer Aas as the
President of the EAIE.

[1] HIS (2008), Eurostudent III - Social and Economic Conditions of
Student Life in Europe, Germany

[2] European Research Associates (2004), Exploring sources on funding for
lifelong learning, Luxembourg

[3] ACA (2006), Perceptions of European Higher Education in Third
Countries, Belgium

Press contact: Joran van Aart, project manager, joran at studyportals.eu, +31(0)40-2920060