Hans-Jochen Schmidt, the Ambassador of the Federative Republic of Germany to Armenia, has expressed surprise during an interview with Aravot.am recently that the Luys Foundation has not provided any scholarship to the Armenian youth studying in any German college so far. “German colleges are of high level and would like to be partner-colleges of the Luys Foundation”, said the ambassador.
Aravot.am asked for a commentary from Luys Foundation CEO Jacqueline Karaaslanian. Mrs. Karaaslanian stated in response to the ambassador’s concerns, “We have a great respect for all high-level colleges. Every country has its best, however the list is determined based on the US News ranking for the top universities in the world. It determines the top 400 universities of the world; our principle is to choose the first 10. We have trusted that international organization to make the list, the reason is that we don’t want to make assessments which one is the first, which one the second or the third. We have left it to the professional company that presents the top 400 colleges every year. It is possible that the universities of Italy or Germany will appear in the first ten one year. We have no control over the process of making the list by US News, we don’t know their standards and we are not responsible for that. If German universities are not in that list, it doesn’t mean that Luys doesn’t respect colleges of Germany or any other country. By the way, our program for this year allows us to make the second list that will make possible cooperation with various countries. We plan cooperation with Germany too, which we discuss at the moment.”
Gohar HAKOBYAN
