LIBYA: Overseas students to be paid stipend

Thousands of Libyan students enrolled in overseas universities now seem likely to be given access to their full monthly stipends from next January as Libyan embassies around the world start receiving money from the transitional government in Tripoli.

In Canberra on Tuesday, the Libyan Embassy announced that it had begun to receive funds to support students currently studying in Australia, along with their families. Libyan embassies elsewhere are likely to have received similar assurances of ongoing funding.

As University World News reported in August, Libyan students enrolled in universities and colleges in Australia, Britain, Egypt, South Africa and the US faced suspension of their stipends following the outbreak of civil war. At the time, several governments had already promised to ensure students would be able to complete their courses.

From 2007 until earlier this year, the Libyan Committee for Higher Education under deposed dictator the late Colonel Muamar Gaddafi regularly announced a series of scholarships for more than 7,000 students undertaking graduate and postgraduate studies overseas.

In the US Libyan assets, including the Libyan-North American Scholarship Programme, were frozen by the US government in February. An estimated 1,900 Libyan students are studying at US universities and English language schools and their tuition fees, medical cover and living allowances in most cases have been paid for by the scholarship programme.

The US State Department said in May that money would be provided to enable students to continue their studies in America until 2012.

In March, the Canadian Bureau for International Education received permission from Libya's Ministry of Education to use payments of around US$1.3 million already in its possession to continue helping Libyan students. But the total cost of the programme was expected to exceed US$200 million this academic year and more funds were said to be needed.

The British Foreign Office estimated that 8,000 Libyan students and their dependents were living in Britain, but said that arrangements had been made to ensure money for students would remain "ring-fenced".

More than 650 Libyan students are enrolled in Australian universities while another 500 are in English language or other colleges and are also on Libyan government scholarships. On Tuesday, the vice-chancellors lobby group, Universities Australia, welcomed the Libyan Embassy's announcement.

Chief Executive Dr Glenn Withers said Australian universities had played an important role over the last four months, ensuring the welfare of Libyan students was a top priority.

"Individual universities made decisions to support students through means available to them, such as providing loans to cover living arrangements and deferring tuition payments. The assistance provided by universities has afforded Libyan students and their families a sense of security during a tumultuous period," Withers said.

"The government's commitment of a $1.5 million loan to the Libyan People's Bureau late in August also guaranteed that Libyan students were not placed in a position of continued anxiety over their studies amid uncertainties in Tripoli."

Withers said Australian universities also recognised the work of the Libyan Embassy in securing continued funding for Libyan students overseas given the current political unrest. "We hope for a smooth transition as they resume their responsibilities for student support over the coming weeks," he said.

Earlier reports said many Libyan students would seek to become refugees in the foreign countries where they were studying because they feared returning home and facing persecution and possibly death under the Gaddafi regime.

Applications from students for refugee status may still flood in, depending on the outcomes of the present tense political situation and while the prospects of Libya achieving a stable, democratic government remain uncertain.