A Student (R) Making Enquires On The Process Of Applying For The Unibridge Programme During The Open Day Held At UBD.

Bandar Seri Begawan - The UniBridge open day held at the Institute of Leadership, Innovation and Advancement (Ilia) at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD) received good response from the public. "We have between 200 and 300 people come in on the first day and about 100 today," said Academic Group Convener of Humanities & Social Sciences at Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah Institute of Education (SHBIE) Shamsiah Zuraini Kanchanawati Hi Tajuddin.

In an interview with The Brunei Times yesterday Shamsiah said that because of the overwhelming response from the public, the deadline for enrolment has been pushed to November 26 instead of today. "The public wanted more time, especially with mature applicants, because they wanted to sort out the conditions with their superiors," she said.

She added "They need the clearance from their superiors because the programme will be conducted full-time during the day time and normal hours."

Aside from "A" Level graduates that have been turned down in their last GenNext applications, she said that there has been a mixture of interested applicants.

"There have been many queries from both government and private sectors for instance the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Education. Department of Economic

Planning and Development as well as banking institutions," she said.

"The usual queries stem from wanting to find out whether they were eligible, what are the conditions to what modules are offered," she added.

According to Shamsiah the most popular programme is the Arts and Humanities because of the variety of courses which applicants can choose from.

"For instance while in the Faculty of Business, Economic and Policy Studies (FBEPS) there is only business related majors, in Humanities a wide variety of courses are offered such as geography, social studies as well as modules they can pick in the Academy of Brunei Studies," she said.

Other courses such as Sociology and Malay Literature courses also garnered a lot of interest among potential students, she added.

"You can take more option modules. It will give you a taste of everything; so for example, you can take both Humanities and Business courses. But ultimately it depends on the students themselves whether they would be able to cope with it," she said.

Compared to the GenNext programme that is free for locals, the UniBridge course has locals pay $500 per module.

"It's a new programme so we have limited space for candidates and it's a bridging programme. It's not an undergraduate programme, so if you want to get into the programme, you must be willing to pay," she said.

According to Shamsiah, there were also queries from those in the public service on whether the Ministry of Education would give scholarships.

A total of 80 participants will be selected for the January intake.

She said that a student must have at least a "B" average for the course as there is a higher probability of getting into the GenNext programme.

Being in this course, she stressed, did not guarantee they would be chosen to be in the GenNext for it ali depends on the screening process where they would take a closer look at the grades and how well they did in the interview and so forth.

"I'm not saying that a student with a "C" or "D" can't get in the programme, it just depends on the interviews. They can still apply for GenNext if they have those grades,"she said.

"It all depends on the people who are interviewing and their grades," she added.

The UniBridge programme is only recognised in UBD and not anywhere else, she said, and even if the students don't get in, they can do the course all over again.

When asked how many times a student is allowed to apply, Shamsiah replied that it was early in the stage to tell.-- Courtesy of The Brunei Times

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Is it really worth it?
written by Rejected Hopeful , December 02, 2009

I am one of those hopeful A Level graduates who have been turned down due to the GenNext program. When UBD offered the UniBridge program, I was ecstatic because people like myself were given a second chance to apply for the GenNext degrees.

But when I went to the UniBridge open day, I was told that I have to pay $500 per module if I get accepted into the program. They told me that the money is for registration and administrative costs. But a normal GenNext applicants only have to pay $240 (Yellow IC) for four years! And if I do get accepted, I have to take four modules (of which three of them are compulsory).

The compulsary modules are "Introduction to University Studies", "Developing the Skills of Academic Literacy" and "Developing the Skills of Academic Numeracy & IT" -are these modules really worth $500? Imagine one person has to pay $2000. If there were 80 people whom passed the interview and were chosen for the program, where does all the money go? What's more, they said the money doesn't include for library usage and other facilities!

$2000 is a lot of money for applying to a program that is going to be held for less than five months. You could pay car insurance, electric and water bills with that amount. I do have the funds but then again the world is still recovering from the latest economic crash. At this point, my family needs the money more than I. Even if I did get accepted for the program, I may have to reject the offer due to the costly expenses.

I would appreciate if the higher ups to look on this matter and possibly reduce the amount of money appropriate for the modules.

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