IE Foundation and Santander bank offer more than 15,800 scholarships worldwide in 2020

• Throughout 2020, IE Foundation has launched 7 different scholarship programs in collaboration with Santander Bank –through Santander Universidades–, reaching around 45,000 applicants with more than 52 different nationalities.
• Thanks to these programs, more than 15,800 scholarships have been offered for top-notch training through intensive 100%-online high impact courses.
• These scholarships focus on digital skills and target from students in their last years of university and young professionals to teachers and educators of every academic level, as well as SMEs managers.

2020 is being a difficult year in so many aspects and there have been many changes in the educational paradigm, being one of the most radical ones the transition to the digital environment. IE Foundation, established in 1997, has faced this great challenge relying on two strong pillars: on one hand, on IE University’s expertise and facilities, already designed for online teaching for many years now, which has allowed it to generate top-quality academic opportunities; and, on the other hand, on the valuable collaboration of Santander Universidades as a travel companion.

Through this year, several scholarship programs have been launched, such as the Santander IE Digital DNA, a pioneering program for digital training to boost the employability of university students that started at the end of 2019. Also worth mentioning, are Santander IE Tech4Law and Santander IE Tech Revolution in Finance, respectively aimed at Law profiles who want to add up new technological skills to their professional development, and at STEM profiles looking to discover their potential in the financial environment.

“Our purpose, as a foundation, is to offer the best international talent first-rate training on the potential of new technologies for the financial ecosystem and the skills to help their professional career and their impact on society in the future. And to be able to do this in partnership with Banco Santander is a privilege,”
Gonzalo Garland, Executive Vice President of IE Foundation

Likewise, the Aid to Education Fund was launched in March as a response to the global volatile and uncertain context, to offer students and young professionals the possibility to speed up, support and impulse, their digital abilities and skills; as well as to offer them in record time the necessary contents for their professional and personal development.

This Aid Fund, which was built up around three training pathways and took place until July, offered 5,500 scholarships to higher education students and young professionals and 10,000 more scholarships to educators from all academic levels to take part in an innovative training program developed by IE University professors completely ad hoc to help them face the transition to a digital academic context. Javier López, Global Director of Social Impact at Santander Universities, explains:

“We do not know what the post-COVID19 education and labor market environment will be like, but what is foreseeable is that digital skills will be more decisive. With this initiative, we want for young people to take better advantage of online training resources and acquire the necessary skills to successfully face a professional future that will be increasingly digitized.”
Javier López, Global Director of Social Impact at Santander Universities 

Finally, the first call of the Tresmares Scholarships was launched in October. This program, aimed at managers from high growth potential Spanish SMEs, will continue in 2021 and will offer these managers the opportunity to cover the 70% of the tuition for any of IE University’s Executive Education programs to that they can further their knowledge about management and leadership, digital transformation, data management and technology, sales and marketing or talent management, among many others

To sum up, all these scholarships share quality training, international social impact and the desire to be part of the change. That is why these scholarships have been created, right from their outset, with the goal to keep evolving and become annual, in addition to all the other new initiatives that hopefully will keep emerging from the strong partnership between IE Foundation and Santander Bank.