CHINESE UNIVERSITIES TO HOLD PROMOTIONAL EVENTS IN JAKARTA, SURABAYA

Jakarta, April 22 (ANTARA) - A number of up-scale Chinese institutes of higher learning are to hold promotional events in Jakarta and Surabaya later this week to interest Indonesians in pursuing academic studies in China.

The promotional events would consist of seminars at certain hotels in Jakarta on Saturday (Apr 25) and Sunday (Apr 26) and on Monday (Aprl 27) in Surabaya, Samuel Wiyono, chairman of the Beijing Language and Culture Institute (BLCI), said here Wednesday.

"China is offering opportunities for studying overseas at costs affordable by Indonesian students and at institutes which in terms of educational quality are not second to those in Europe and the USA,' he said.

Some of the prominent institutes of higher learning in China also offer scholarships worth Rp16 million per person while interested students will be exempt from visa costs and enrolment fees. "These facilities are intended to help Indonesian students during the present global financial crisis," he said.

The Chinese institutes of higher learning offered Indonesian students study programs with English as the medium of instruction so that they could immediately attend classes without having first to take a Mandarin-language course.

But the institutes also offered Mandarin-language and 'Pre-univeristy/Foundation" programs in English for second-grade senior high-school or O-level students and Strata 1-Strata 2 programs conducted in either Mandarin or English.

The resource persons at the seminars in Jakarta and Surbaya would be represenatives of such institutes of higher learning as Xian Jiaotong Liverpool University (XJTLU), Dongbei University Finance Economics of Dalian (DUFE), South China University Technology Guangzhou (SCUT), Beihang University of Beijing.
"XJTLU will directly give every student who registers at the seminar a scholarhip worth RMB 10,000 or Rp 16 million," Wiyono said.