University of Aberdeen offers scholarships to out of work oil workers

Postgraduate education at UoA is being offered at a discounted price for oil workers who have recently lots their jobs.

The recent crash of oil prices has pressured Aberdeen’s economy. While for a lot of students this means hope for cheaper accommodation, for the 40,000 people whose jobs depend on oil and gas, it’s a nightmare.

The university has offered to help by awarding regional scholarships for full-time and part-time postgraduate energy programmes to directly affected people.

Residents of Aberdeenshire get 20 per cent discount on specific courses in the university’s catalogue of courses.

Included are Energy Management (tuition 19,000, with scholarship 15,200), Energy Law (5,600, with scholarship 4,480) and Analytical Chemistry (4,500, with scholarship 3,600).

The full list of programmes, as well as the terms and conditions, can be found here.

For Scottish nationals and “European” Nationals  that want to go back to university but can’t come up with the money, it’s worth having a closer look at the SAAS’ website.

Although most postgrad programmes aren’t eligible for tuition funding, there are exceptions.

In 2015/2016, the list included several oil and gas concerned programmes like ‘renewable engineering’ and ‘soil science’. With a little luck, it might be possible to fund that postgrad degree after all.

We should be proud that our university is trying to give back to the local community in hard times. We all hope that for everyone affected this isn’t long term.