Czech students bound for 43 universities in 10 countries with support from The Kellner Family Foundation

The grantees have elected to study at the likes of the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, Rochester Institute of Technology, and other institutions in the UK, the US, Austria, the Netherlands, China, Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, and the Czech Republic. In the space of 12 years, 215 students fresh out of secondary schools across the Czech Republic have received funding from the Foundation to cover tuition fees and other costs associated with their university studies. In that time, The Kellner Family Foundation has disbursed more than CZK 100 million in university grants, enabling Czech students to deepen their understanding of their fields of study while gaining international experience and a global outlook that will contribute to the advancement of Czech society.

• There are 54 grantees in the Foundation’s Universities project in the 2021/2022 academic year.
• The Foundation also continues to support Open Gate Grammar School’s former students who received need-based scholarships during their secondary school studies. Of this year’s cohort of 54 grantees, 12 are graduates of Open Gate.
• Over the 12 years that the Foundation has supported Czech undergraduates, especially those at universities abroad, there have been 215 grantees.

In the 2021/22 academic year, 54 students will receive financial support. For 22 of them, this is the first year that they are receiving support under the scheme (up a full third compared to those newly admitted in previous years). A further 14 are drawing on grants for a second year, and 18 have been benefiting from the Foundation’s support for three or more years.

Clustered geographically, the grantees are mainly students from Prague (14), Central Bohemia (12), and Moravia Silesia (8). Others come from the regions of Ústí nad Labem (6), Zlín (6), Olomouc (2), and South Moravia (2). Finally, there is one apiece from the Pardubice, Liberec, South Bohemian, and Karlovy Vary regions.

This year, 30 students will be attending universities in the UK. Others are off to the US, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, China, Ireland and Spain. The Foundation has awarded support to four students who will be studying in the Czech Republic. Three of these are Open Gate alumni who benefited from need-based scholarship when they were enrolled at the school. One student is to start studying at the Prague branch of a foreign university. “It is entirely up to the students what field of study they choose to pursue. However, when selecting grantees, we do put a premium on subjects that can prove complicated to study in the Czech Republic or that do not have a strong reputation here. Then there are certain interdisciplinary fields of study that Czech universities do not even offer as a package,” explains Petra Dobešová, a trustee at The Kellner Family Foundation who also sits on the panel responsible for reviewing grant applications. “The Foundation’s abiding vision is to transform society through quality education, so we quite naturally consider how a particular field of study can be put to use in the future in the Czech Republic and how it can benefit Czech society,” she adds.

Geographical preferences tempered by Brexit and the pandemic

The fields studied by Universities grantees have proved to be durably stable. They tend to be technical subjects and computer science, closely followed by natural sciences, humanities and social sciences. Other fields studied by grantees include economics, management, medicine, pharmacy, arts, and law.

Selecting who would be awarded a grant was very challenging. Having received more than 100 applications, the Foundation invited 33 students for face-to-face interviews. In awarding the grants, it singled out those who had demonstrated high academic prowess and true passion for their field of study through their accomplishments to date and their engagement in activities significantly broadening their range of knowledge in secondary education. In this respect, for example, candidates could point to projects designed specifically for secondary school students who look beyond the school curriculum, including the Academy of Science’s Open Science scheme, the Centre for Talented Minds, and the Secondary School Vocational Activities Programme. 

Some grantees are studying at the UK’s top universities, having chosen mathematics, physics, and medicine at the University of Oxford, and natural sciences, archaeology, economics, and technology at the University of Cambridge. Others are pursuing biochemistry at Imperial College London, computer science at ETH Zürich, and physics at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Then there are students of music at famed universities in Vienna and Germany. In one intriguing case, a grantee caught the contemporary-circus bug and is studying at the third best circus school in the world – the Dutch Academy for Circus and Performance Art.

The global COVID-19 pandemic and uncertainty surrounding travel opportunities got in the way of some students’ plans. In the circumstances, they reconsidered their original idea of studying in the US and opted instead for a closer, European university. 

Another aspect reshaping the grantees’ geographical preferences is the UK’s departure from the European Union. “The latest influx of grantees proved to be less interested in universities in the UK, where the cost of study has skyrocketed since Brexit. By contrast, we have registered a keener interest in the Netherlands, which offers a comparatively wide range of courses in English. Universities elsewhere in Europe are also attracting attention,” says Petra Dobešová.