Top student Kristen White has called for more to be done to help fund students taking degrees abroad.

The 18-year-old business student said she was grateful for her $5,000 Government award, but argued that even those students lucky enough to get grants still had to seek other funding to make ends meet.

She said: "I've put out 13 packages to firms, asking them to sponsor me. I've told them that I will pay them back if I don't maintain a grade (point) average of 3.5. Most scholarships are revoked if you don't maintain 3.0.'' Ms White has won a spot at McGill University in Canada, but missed out on the chance of a Bermuda Government Scholarship after a mix-up over her grades.

Kristen, from Spanish Point, managed to get a grade point average of 3.77 despite raising her two-and-half-year-old son and working to earn cash for her studies.

She said: "My parents were really supportive so it was not as hard as it could have been.'' But she still faces problems in funding her studies in Canada.

She said: "You can't even get a visa to go unless you have at least $10,000.

My parents are taking out a $5,000 loan to help me.'' Kristen reckons arts and social science students faced an even harder time getting funding here and some students were having to postpone their courses or seek cheaper colleges.

"There are so few general scholarships and the rest are business scholarships,'' she said.

She also said the application process for Government Scholarships was haphazard.

"There's so many people applying for a scholarship that it's hard to monitor,'' Kristen said. "It takes a long time and maybe there should be more people helping sort it out.'' She also said the form required applicants to have put in a certain amount of extra curricula activity yet this was hard on students with difficult family circumstances such as belonging to a one-parent family.

"It's important to be involved in the college community,'' Kristen said, "but some people don't have time because they have responsibilities in the household or they are working to save cash to get to college if they fail to get Government funding.'' But Education Minister Milton Scott denied that students who had not put in the hours on the extra curricula activities would rule themselves out when applying for the Government Scholarship.

He said: "We look at the entire student. We have a holistic approach. If students are unhappy, then they can appeal.'' Sen. Scott said Government could not be expected to pay all of students' expenses.

He said: "There has to be an element of parental responsibility. Parents must start making adequate provision long before the issue of sending their kids away appears on the horizon.'' And he denied Government was letting students down.

"Bermuda has more students in tertiary education abroad than any other country in the world,'' he said.