Half the people I speak to on whether they want to move to grad school after their undergraduate degree. Their major dilemma is whether they should leave the soft cushion of a steady income job that they just earned after working hard during their undergraduate degrees or leave all of it and pay hefty college fees again to pursue higher education and venture into unknown. If I ask them the same question but tell them that they can earn a master’s degree without paying a penny, rather they can save some money if they are frugal with their spending habits, the answer tends to be more aligned towards higher education. Now we all know that Ph.D. admit in engineering often comes with a tuition waiver and a generous stipend but finding a fully funded master’s degree is tricky. Here is a list of few fully funded master’s programs that students can look into.
Erasmus Mundus Programs
Erasmus Mundus is a program funded by the European Commission. Its aims are to encourage mobility (long-term and short-term) of students and staff; to attract the best talents to Europe and; to promote European higher education worldwide.
They offer fully-funded master’s program across various disciplines. Not only they cover your tuition, they also offer a generous stipend to cover your living expenses as well as in some cases, flight fare to reach the program’s center from your home country.
Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree Program is an integrated study program and each program often is carried out across various participating universities across Europe.
Let’s take a look at some specific examples.
ERASMUS MUNDUS MASTER NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY
This program is carried in collaboration between 5 partner universities. The course is organized by the KU Leuven (Belgium), Chalmers Tekniska Högskola, Göteborg (Sweden), Technische Universität Dresden (Germany), Université Grenoble Alpes (France) and
Universitat de Barcelona (Spain) with option to pursue different research tracks as shown in the figure below.
This program comes fully funded scholarship details of which can be found here
Another awesome program that is offered by Erasmus Mundus is
ERASMUS MUNDUS MASTER IN MEMBRANE ENGINEERING FOR A SUSTAINABLE WORLD
The Master in Membrane Engineering for a Sustainable World, EM3E-4SW, offers an advanced educational program related to membrane science and engineering at the interface between materials science and chemical engineering and focused on specific applicative fields. It involves 6 Higher Education Institutions of 5 European countries:
- Université de Montpellier (France), coordinating organization,
- Université Toulouse 3 Paul Sabatier (Toulouse, France),
- University of Chemistry and Technology Prague (Czech Republic),
- Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Portugal),
- Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain),
- University of Twente (Netherlands).
Associated partners are:
- Università della Calabria (Italy),
- Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium)
They offer very generous scholarships too which can be seen here
Chemical Nano-Engineering
“Chemical Nano-Engineering” is offered by the Consortium of three Universities: Aix-Marseille University in France, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology in Poland and University of Roma Tor Vergata in Italy. These universities have a long experience of common research projects and teaching collaborations in the framework of Erasmus program. They are providing an excellent environment for Nano-Engineering studies and opportunities for students to participate in research projects conducted by world-class researchers. Upon the completion of the two-year cycle, successful students will be awarded a Joint Master degree.
Details about their scholarships can be found here
MATERIALS FOR ENERGY STORAGE AND CONVERSION
The MESC+ Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree is a 2-year programme in Materials Science and Electrochemistry, fully taught in English, involving 5 Universities in 4 European countries (France, Poland, Slovenia and Spain), 2 Universities in USA and Australia, a European Research Institute (ALISTORE), the French Network on Energy Storage (RS2E), the Slovenian National Institute of Chemistry (NIC) and a leading Research Center in Spain (CIC Energigune).
It is run by a number of world-renowned members of Research Laboratories in the field of energy-related materials who work closely together through several European and trans-European projects.
The program again comes with a generous scholarship, the details of which could be found here.
Canadian Universities
Unlike universities in USA, Canadian universities often fund their master’s student either as Research Assistants/Teaching Assistants although they have to pay for their tuition. for example, Chemical and Applied Engineering department of the University of Toronto offers a generous stipend to their students. Details of which can be found in the image below,
Other universities in Canada offer a similar stipend.
Studycentrals 