The Copyright Licensing & Administration Society of Singapore (CLASS) held its 12th Bursary Award on 1 December 2022, granting bursaries worth over $100,000 to forty students from local polytechnics and universities. Since 2011, CLASS has awarded bursaries to help low-income Singaporean students and motivate them to excel in their academic dreams. The continuous support from publishers underscores CLASS’s commitment to help build Singapore’s talent pipelines for the next generation. With this effort, both students and educators are made aware of the importance of preserving copyright and publisher’s work in modern education.
The ceremony, hosted at the Intellectual Property Office Singapore (IPOS), was graced by Senior Parliamentary Secretary (SPS) for Health and Law, Madam Rahayu Mahzam as Guest-of-Honour. During the ceremony, SPS Madam Rahayu highlighted the importance of intellectual property (IP) in encouraging innovation. In her speech, she said, “ Copyright is an effective tool to advance knowledge. It provides authors with economic incentives to create learning resources that are necessary to help achieve educational goals”. She also encouraged all students to “continuously innovate, to keep learning and to learn and respect different ideas, perspectives and values and be the strong pillars in our society”.
This year’s recipients were selected by their schools from the National University of Singapore, Singapore Management University, Singapore Institute of Management, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore University of Social Sciences and the five polytechnics — Nanyang, Ngee Ann, Temasek, Singapore and Republic.