The King and Queen presided this Wednesday at the award ceremony for the "la Caixa" Foundation postgraduate scholarships abroad, awarded to the 120 university students selected in the 2021 call, as explained by the foundation.
This is the 40th edition of the entity's scholarship program, which aims to promote the talent of the "most outstanding" students by expanding their training in "the best universities in the world".
The event, held at CaixaForum Madrid, was also attended by the Minister of Education and Vocational Training, Pilar Alegría; and the president of the la Caixa Foundation, Isidro Fainé.
"Improving education is the basis for everything, it is the only way to build a fairer society that guarantees the social welfare of all, without exclusion. For this reason, we have been promoting this scholarship program for 40 years, with where we want to give students and researchers with the greatest potential the opportunity to access the best universities and research centers in the world", Fainé remarked.
Representing the group of former scholarship holders of the foundation, the person in charge of the World Campaign Against Ageism of the World Health Organization (WHO), Vânia de la Fuente-Núñez, addressed the attendees: "This scholarship is much more than financial support to promote knowledge and satisfy individual curiosity".
The postgraduate scholarship award ceremony has been held again this year after two editions in which it had to be suspended due to the pandemic. The granting of scholarships, however, did not stop during this period and, in 2021, the program celebrates 40 editions of uninterrupted promotion of training and research.
Of the 120 scholarships awarded, 68 scholarships are for study in Europe and 52 scholarships are for study in North America. The countries that attract the most scholarship holders are the United States (47) and the United Kingdom (34).
In addition, the scholarship recipients of the class of 2021 come from 29 Spanish provinces, two from Portugal and five from other countries. The provinces of origin with the most scholarship holders are Barcelona (31), Madrid (29), Valencia (6), Guipúzcoa (4) and Girona (4).
The average age of the scholarship holders is 24.7 years (at the time of receiving the scholarship) and among them there are 71 men (59%) and 49 women (41%).
1,325 students have applied for this edition of the foundation's scholarships for postgraduate studies abroad and 120 of them have obtained scholarships, awarded on a competitive basis.
The universities that receive the most scholarship holders are: Imperial College London (9), London School of Economics and Political Science (7), Columbia University (7), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (6), ETH Zürich (6), University of Oxford (5) and University of Cambridge (4).
Finally, the most represented disciplines are engineering and technology (22), economic and business sciences (9), international relations (7), physical sciences (6), medical and health sciences (6), the law (6) and music (6).
