Children of killed soldiers receive scholarships

A very poignant article.

they ought to clarify if it was a scholarship or a bursary.

When I went to school, the students with the best grades got the scholarship, but my parent's employer handed out bursaries to any student that got an A or B average.

This is good !

A very postive thing is being done here. They are letting the childern of the fallen know that they are not forgotten and can have a chance at a sucesfull life.

ASL a bursary kind of sounds like a scholarship from what you just described. Whats the differance?

A very postive thing is being done here. They are letting the childern of the fallen know that they are not forgotten and can have a chance at a sucesfull life.

ASL a bursary kind of sounds like a scholarship from what you just described. Whats the differance?

My understanding - i might be wrong - is if 100 students got a B average, they all got $300 per semester for the year, and the if there were 600 A students they all got $1000 per semester. This is called a bursary, and students that have worked their butts off to get a scholarship can sometimes get a bit offended, if you call a bursary a scholarship. And, I totally understand that, a scholarship is just a wee bit more special.


Where as there were scholarships handed out that went to the best student in a specific category. I've scholarships for the best student likely to get into a trade or a sport, so it isnt always their academic standing that make them the best.

In the case of these students, were they the 6 best students? if so we should have given them some credit for that ,too.

That's not quite the difference. Scholarships are handed out more due to academic merit primarily, and some companies have exclusionary ones available only to the children or employees which work in that company if they meet a given set of academic criteria, usually year or grade related. That these are exclusive does not stop them from being scholarships -- most scholarships require you to be a part of a specific faculty, at a specific university, from a specific region, have a certain heritage, or have a certain disability. This is in effort to provide the scholarships to the area of special interest which they are coming from. For example, a society for Research for the Blind will provide those students with sight problems a scholarship primarily, and would not provide a general scholarship.

A bursary, on the other hand, is focused on the need of the applicant. Should a student be in financial duress or require additional support to proceed in university studies in the form of money, it will be provided to them if they meet various criteria to make sure they are needy enough. Hence, if you have parents who do not work for a company which provides support or high wages, cannot get scholarships and have little potential of support other than student loans (which can be hard to get and aren't the best thing to have hanging over people's heads, including the cosigners which tend to be family, but are still a central source of funding for schooling for many) than it's possible for you to apply for a bursary. Again, they do have exclusionary practices at times, but the defining difference between a scholarship and a bursary does tend to be the financial need of the individual.

Hence, your example in the above post is incorrect. If all these students had varying levels of financial needs, then it's likely their school or some other body provides scholarships for proving a specific level of academic excellence. Hence, if they got a B average and they get 300 dollars a semester for it, that means that it's a scholarship, for they have all achieved the necessary academic skill to get it. Likewise with the 600 A students. If instead you were looking at it from a more financial point of view with the various abilities of these students to pay for their education, then you would be calling it a "bursary."

I know it's not the point of this article and is a side discussion, but I was pretty sure it worked this way and I've done some checking before posting, and I'm fairly sure that's the majority of the differences in meaning between the two. As EyeBrock, Kenmore and stratos have said, this is a poignant article on something very good which has happened, and I'm happy to see that these kids are getting support to begin or continue their post-secondary careers. Best of luck to all of these children who have lost a parent to war!