Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has announced the second part of its COVID-19 Relief Package aimed at supporting final-year undergraduates as they enter a tight job market amid the pandemic.
All fresh graduates in this year’s undergraduate Class of 2020 will receive an additional SGD 1,600 in alumni credits. These could be used to offset the fees for a suite of NTU Continuing Education and Training (CET) courses, and are valid until June 2021.
The amount is on top of the existing SGD 1,600 in credits available to all alumni to benefit from NTU’s CET courses.
“We want to help the NTU undergraduate Class of 2020, [who are] graduating in this period of unprecedented challenges," said NTU President Subra Suresh.
"Our newest graduates will now have the opportunity to apply these new alumni credits to benefit from various NTU continuing education courses, and to selectively stack their academic credits from these courses towards a MiniMaster’s Certificate. This will give them a competitive edge in securing employment."
Each MiniMaster’s programme has half the academic load of a full Master’s programme. The course credits earned from a MiniMaster’s programme may be accepted as partial fulfilment of the requirements for a full Master’s degree, which could be pursued at a later date.
Earlier this week, the university unveiled its first COVID-19 Relief Package which comprised three new coordinated measures to assist students facing financial hardship due to the pandemic.
In conjunction with Workforce Singapore, NTU also plans to create several hundred paid traineeships for the undergraduate Class of 2020 to support the SGUnited Traineeships Programme.
Under this programme, the Singapore government provides 80 per cent of the training allowance to graduates meeting certain eligibility requirements. These traineeships will be available across NTU’s colleges, schools, research centres and institutes, as well as corporate and joint laboratories with strong industry engagement. They are open to the undergraduate Class of 2020 from all disciplines.