Education With Company Sponsorship

Student sponsorship is available for a wide range of education courses, but most commonly for higher education courses. Sponsorship is when you work with a company whilst studying. In return the company pays your course fees and/or a bursary towards your maintenance costs while you study.

Students may be sponsored throughout their whole course or just part of it. Commonly, students are sponsored for the final year of their course.

Courses and Sponsorship

Technically any course is eligible for sponsorship funding. However, the reality is that some types of courses are more likely to attract sponsorship financing than others. Sectors which are particularly likely to attract sponsorship include:

• Engineering
• IT
• Sciences
• Business

Why Do Businesses Offer Student Sponsorship?

Obviously in the profit-driven world of business, companies are unlikely to pay for students’ courses purely out of the goodness of their hearts. So, what’s in it for sponsors?

There are, in fact, lots of benefits to companies.

Sponsorship schemes allow businesses to attract and develop talented students. If they spot someone with talent they have a headstart on possibly attracting them as employees later.

Even if students who are sponsored don’t go on to work for the sponsor later, the business still gets the benefit of their skills and knowledge for a limited period. Businesses will only sponsor students they believe are talented.

If you are thinking of working for a business sponsor later on, a sponsorship arrangement allows them to start developing the skills they need whilst you are still studying.

A sponsorship arrangement allows both the student and the sponsor to have practical experience of a working arrangement before they make a full commitment.

Finding Student Sponsorship

Sadly, there is no one-stop shop for finding sponsorship. There are plenty of places you can look though.

University websites and department sites are worth checking out. Some businesses have relationships with specific universities. If there’s no information on the website, it’s worth a quick call to the admissions officer about possible sponsorship opportunities for the course you are interested in.

If there is a particular company you’re interested in being sponsored by/working for your first port of call should be their website as they may advertise sponsorship and funding opportunities there.

However, it’s also worth noting that not all sponsorship opportunities are advertised. Some companies may not be averse to the idea of sponsorship, but they will wait for applications rather than advertising general opportunities. A well-timed speculative letter or phone call could work wonders.

Finally, do check job pages of newspapers and industry publications regularly.

When to Start Applying

If you want sponsorship for your full course, you’ll need to start looking and applying around the same time as you send in your UCAS application.

If you are just interested in final year sponsorship or mid-course sponsorship it’s advisable to start your applications around a year before you expect the sponsorship to begin.

A Final Note….

It isn’t true that a sponsorship means that you are tied into working for the sponsor company when you graduate. This is not normally something either the company or the student would want. Businesses usually want to see people in action on the job before they decide whether to offer them a permanent job.

However, in a minority of cases some form of future commitment will be a condition of sponsorship, so always make sure you clarify any terms and conditions before you agree to a sponsorship.