The Fiji Higher Education Commission says 5000 government scholarships for students to do Technical and Vocational Education and Training last year through the Tertiary Education Loans Scheme (TELS) were not fully utilised.
Commission director Dr Rohit Kishore said quite a large number of technical and vocational students opted to study privately.
“Those 5000 places were provided under the Tertiary Loans Scheme,” Mr Kishore said.
“About 2800 in FNU were utilised and the rest of the loans scheme spaces were not utilised.
“There are quite a large number of TVET students who are actually studying TVET programs at FNU but the loan scheme from the Government that was provided, that is 5000, they were left.”
Mr Kishore said more than 5000 TVET students were studying at FNU.
“Students even knowing about the loans scheme, opted to pay privately because they had money and they could afford to pay.”
He said a million dollar grant that was directly provided to FNU to upskill and reskill workers who lost work because of COVID-19, were utilised.
“Those were short courses. “In that, almost 90 to 95 per cent was utilised.”
