Stormzy launches scholarship for black students at Cambridge University

[dar0ck]

Stormzy will fund the undergraduate studies of two black British students going to Cambridge University.

The grime MC announced the launch of The Stormzy Scholarship, a new fund to encourage and support black students from underprivileged or disadvantaged backgrounds to study at Cambridge University. The scholarship will pay for tuition fees and provide a maintenance grant for up to four years of an undergraduate course starting this year, and two more in 2019.

"We as a minority are still heavily under represented at the top universities and I pray this scholarship serves as a reminder that we are more than capable of studying at places of this caliber (sic)," the BRIT Award-winning rapper, real name Michael Omari Owuo, wrote in a post on Instagram on Thursday (16Aug18). "This is my proudest venture thus far and I look forward to seeing some young black geniuses go on to achieve at Cambridge via this scholarship."

The Shut Up rapper originally planned to fund one scholarship this year, however, YouTube Music executives pledged its support to fund another after hearing of Stormzy's plans.

Cambridge University has been criticised for failing to admit many pupils from a black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) background in recent years.

The university, which has called on parents and schools for help to increase the number of black British students in its ranks, admitted just 58 black students in 2017. British newspaper The Financial Times found that some Cambridge colleges didn't offer any places to black students between 2012 to 2016.

The former oil refinery worker didn't attend university, but he previously revealed that he had had ambitions to study political science at Oxford.

Last month Stormzy launched publishing imprint #Merky Books, a partnership with Penguin Random House, to help young writers become authors.

The application deadline for the first intake of The Stormzy Scholarship is 30 August.

For more information, go to www.cam.ac.uk/stormzyscholarship.