US online university offers 50 scholarships for Burmese refugees

 

The online California-based University of the People is offering 50 scholarships to Burmese applicants, including refugees who live on the Thai-Burmese border, the Irrawaddy Online reported on Thursday.

 

The offer was announced by president of the university Shai Reshef during a visit to Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot district of Tak province of Thailand. More than 100 people, including migrant workers and refugees, attended the event.

 

The scholarship is specially aimed at students born in Burma to facilitate tuition-free study toward American accredited degrees at the university’s virtual campus, said a statement of the university, the world’s first non-profit, tuition-free accredited American online university.

 

Shai Reshef said he was very happy to see the level of interest in education. “They really want to study higher education. There seems to be a big demand for Myanmar people to study. They think the University of the People, offering an online degree is a great opportunity because it is tuition-free.”

 

Full story: http://englishnews.thaipbs.or.th/us-online-university-offers-50-scholarships-for-burmese-refugees/

 

 

 

-- © Copyright Thai PBS 2016-11-26

 

The institution is NOT accredited by any of the six regional tertiary accrediting associations such as the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, which accredits everything from Harvard to Adams State College in that region. Therefore they cannot claim it's accredited to equal a bona fide U.S. degree. The accrediting agency in this case is the  Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC), which may be part of the US Dept of Education. BUT the US government does not involve itself in accrediting, approving or evaluating mainstream American colleges and universities. There are some fully accredited brick-and-mortar colleges that offer some online degrees, and at least one that I know of that is distance but not online (my Malaysian ex-wife got a B.S. from that one while we were in Abu Dhabi, and not very expensive, and it's allowed her to advance to a good executive position in the business sector in the USA).

Might this be Trump University? Hurry and sign up and get a cut of the settlement profits. 

I'm sure there will be some very happy bankers will to extend very generous student loans to boot.