Prague, Sept 21 (CTK) – Only few refugees used the opportunity to join English study programmes at Czech universities for free, daily Lidove noviny writes yesterday.
When Prague’s Charles University offered free study in English to refugees who are granted asylum, get a residence permit and pass the entrance exams about one years ago and some other universities made similar offers, they received angry anonymous letters from people who feared that the country would be flooded with Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi students, the paper writes.
“We were confronted with massive threatening,” Palacky University Vice Rector Petr Bilik said.
The university heads were considered traitors who paid the study of refugees from the tax-payers’ money, LN writes.
Palacky University, seated in Olomouc, north Moravia, organised visits of refugee facilities and teachers and students brought toys and various equipment to the refugees when the migrant wave culminated last year. The university negotiated with the Czech government about future scholarships for Syrians.
However, a single asylum seeker from a war zone joined the Czech language course for foreigners in Olomouc.
At Charles University, only one Syrian refugee will start studying a bachelor’s humanities programme this academic year. Two more Syrians have been admitted by the university, one pharmacy and one stomatology student, but none of them is an asylum seeker.
The university’s spokesman Vaclav Hajek told the paper that 18 Syrian refugees have been undergoing a two-year preparatory course in Czech since last autumn.
These refugees should learn Czech well and get acquainted with their field of study to get prepared for the entrance exams and become regular students.
Study at Czech public universities is free of charge for young people, only university programmes taught in English are paid by the participants.
One Syrian man from Aleppo underwent a language course and was admitted to the West Bohemian University in Plzen, but he arrived in the Czech Republic legally. He has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Syria and he continues in this field of study, LN writes.
As Middle East languages are taught at the West Bohemian University, its management offered a team of interpreters speaking Arabic and Persian to the civil service when refugees started coming to the country in 2015.
Masaryk University in Brno did not expect high interest in the study at Czech universities and it founded a scholarship fund in support of humanitarian activities that wants to motivate Czech students to take part in charity projects and be willing to contribute to the solution to humanitarian crises, Tereza Fojtova, from the rector’s office, said.
Since October 2015, the fund has paid out 90,000 crowns for students activities related to refugee camps, war zones in Ukraine and aid in Ghana, among others.
No refugee showed interest in studying at the Czech Technical University (CVUT) and the University of Chemistry and Technology (VSCHT), both seated in Prague.
The Czech University of Life Sciences provided stipends to two students from Kurdistan, its spokesman Josef Beranek said.
At the Brno University of Technology, refugees could apply for being exempt from the tuition fees, but nobody was enrolled.
kva/t/ms
