When the rich and powerful encourage their children get scholarships

Unless the rich and powerful get their companies to send the children there, and they will charge the cost as business expenses. When i worked in HR in large companies, they did pay the private boarding school for the children of the executives. Trust me on this: Not many rich people will dig into their own pockets to pay for the high fees if they can charge it to their businesses.

@LadyDuck Not really. All big companies will have scholarship programs, and these scholars will get rotated among different functions in the companies as part of their management training program. If they own the company, letting their children get scholarships mean that the children have to work for the family business!

@scheng1 If they own the company it is like stealing to the associates and to the shareholders. Here they pay from their earnings, because they can deduct the costs from the taxes and this is even better.

The rich are getting disproportionately more in scholarships. Over here in Singapore, 90% of us live in public housing, yet those who make up more than half of the Public Service Commission are from private housing! If based on the statistics, the children of the general public should get 90% of the scholarships! It is not a secret that rich people, including politicians, send their children to elite schools, and they can hire tutors to coach their children. If those kids attend neighborhood schools, and have no private tuition, I doubt they can score well enough to get scholarships. As to the poor and lower middle classes, the parents cannot afford private tutors for their children, and many of the children still have to work part time to pay for their living expenses in colleges. If the scholarships go to the poor and lower middle class, the students can focus on the studies, and their parents do not need to worry about the high tuition fees too.

@scheng1 _ Why doesn't the 90% of the general public use it's numerical superiority "persuade" public officials to overhaul the scholarship system in your country?

@josie_ I do not know. It has been a longstanding issue. Whenever the children of the politicians break bond, someone will bring out this fact, and everyone will make noise. The government just try to hush it down. I think in many countries, politicians and the rich are getting preferential privileges, but they will hide the information from the public.

@scheng1 Perhaps the scholarships are different. Here the scholarships are mainly given to the students who are very excellent in study.

@youless The scholarships given by the government are much stringent than the scholarships that you have in mind. The students have to undergo a few rounds of interview with very senior people in the government. They are not just looking at good results. This government scholarships are meant to attract the talented ones, and groomed them to become the leaders in the government 30 years later. The scholarships come with full payment of university fees, housing allowance (for overseas study such as in Cambridge University, Harvard University or other first-tier universities), and a very generous monthly allowance to cover living expenses. It comes with a few years of bond with government bodies too. However, the career track is a fast track one. They can get promoted a couple of times a year, and lead the various divisions in the government by their 30s.