DRB-Hicom allocates RM52 mln for 3,000 student scholarships for Automotive University

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 23 (Bernama) -- DRB-Hicom Bhd has allocated RM52 million in scholarship for 3,000 students of DRB HICOM University of Automotive Malaysia (DHU) for the next three years, the university's Vice-Chancellor Prof Dato’ Seri Dr Omar Osman said today.

The massive amount of scholarships was reflective of DRB-Hicom's continued commitment to the university since its inception by building the sprawling campus and churning out students keen to excel in the automotive industry.

"That is a very big (allocation), which means they are willing to forego the income from that portion of RM52 million for the next 3 years (and) shows that the DRB Group is committed to nation-building and getting the right talent to come to the university," he said in an interview today.

“The scholarships would spur greater interest among youths to be involved in the automotive sector," he said in a statement containing excerpts of the interview.

Dr Omar said the notion among many students that engineering sciences was difficult to pursue needs to be discarded.

This was in view of the fact that the nation needed more youths to be interested in science and engineering and come to universities like DHU.

"We are here to nurture you, we are here to actually give you the best education and skills that we can give and do not be afraid of the so-called difficult subjects. We got to work through this educative process together so as to build a nation that is developed for the future.

"The DRB-Hicom group has already allowed us to give away partial scholarships for each degree student amounting to RM15,000, which means students don't have to pay RM15,000 more than what is necessary," he added.

DHU is also giving RM10,000 for diploma students while for foundation students, we are giving them almost free tuition fees for their one-year programme here.

He said there were 100 scholarships which included full tuition fees and also some allowances set aside for children coming from the B40 group, whose family income is RM4,000 or RM8,000 and below. There are about 100 of them every year.

Located in DRB-Hicom’s Automotive Complex in Pekan, DRB-Hicom University is the only university in the country that focused on the automotive ecosystem. 

Established as the International College of Automotive Malaysia in 2010, it was conferred full-fledged university status on October 2015 and offered programmes from the foundation level to doctorate.

Dr Omar lauded DRB-Hicom for being bold enough to establish and invest into an automotive university which had the potential capacity to grow into a full-fledged university, technical in nature and work on a corporate social responsibility platform aimed at rolling out RM52 million worth of scholarships for 3,000 students for the next three years.

DRB-Hicom has done right for higher education in Malaysia, in particular to enhance the Technical Vocational Education and Training profile of the country so that "we can produce highly technical skilled engineers capable of being absorbed into the automotive sector in the future."

"The difference between a public university and a private university like us is that we design our curriculum for foundation and engineering, which enables us to accommodate the student’s ambitions.

"So, if the students want to pursue a degree in automotive service technology with a minimal qualification to enter the university, they can actually move to such a programme easily and take a greater interest in it and possibly become a very successful student," he said, adding that DHU enabled students keen on the automotive sector to pursue what they want and enhance their job prospects.

-- BERNAMA