Funding Scholarships

Readers from our fair isle will do well to note the similarities from elsewhere.

Old news from 5 years ago:

Mafia Scholarships?

Taiwan's gangs are paying the tuition of some university students in exchange for service as accountants or other skilled professionals after graduation...

Gang fronts operating as finance companies will pay school fees and monthly stipends of $900 to $1,200 for needy students...

Students then hand over school transcripts and identification and sign a "contract" agreeing to work for the gangs for an unspecified number of years...

Some very recent news from the US a few days ago:

In the new Intelligence Community Scholars Program (ICSP), "unnamed intelligence agencies" will enter into contractual agreements with individual students. The funding could amount to as much as $160,000 over a four year period.

Here's the kicker:

If ICSP recipients decline to work for their sponsoring intelligence agency upon completing of their education, then the student "shall be liable to the United States for an amount equal to the total amount of the scholarships received [and] the interest on the amounts of such awards which would be payable if at the time the awards were received they were loans bearing interest at the maximum legal prevailing rate, as determined by the Treasurer of the United States, multiplied by three.

(Via Savage Minds)

ST headline tomorrow: Singapore exports government scholarship policies to US (and Taiwan)?

Serve your Taiwanese gangland/US intelligence/Singapore scholarship bond, or have a lousy credit rating for the rest of your life.

Glad to know great minds think alike, really.