Sponsorships and Bursaries for Games Courses

The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences has just announced a new fund for people studying games in US universities:

The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) has announced the creation of the Dr. Randy Pausch Scholarship Fund, established to support students in pursuit of careers in game design, development, and production.  The AIAS will award four $2,500 scholarships to students attending accredited universities.

Not sure what they mean by ‘accredited universities’ (in relation to our own work) but I expect it means a bona fide college programme, with the equivalent of the UK’s validation system in place.

This follows news recently that Brothers in Arms developer Gearbox had provided $50k worth of support to the Guildhall at SMU.

Both programs show that games companies stateside are seriously gearing up their talent search, and can presumably help diversity levels in the games industry by enabling currently underrepresented groups the tools they need to get a career in games.

So is this a trend? It’s fairly common in other industries for companies to sponsor students so can we expect this to become the norm in games? And will it reach the UK?

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