International Scholarship Program Research Articles

The Endeavour scholarships program in the era of the Asian century: promise unfulfilled

PurposeThe Australian Government has long used its international scholarship programs as an instrument of soft power in international diplomacy. The paper examines an international scholarship program and its role in Australia’s soft power efforts during a period in recent history.Design/methodology/approachThe Australia in the Asian Century White Paper of 2012 is used as a lens to reveal how the Australian Government viewed the role of international scholarship programs in international diplomacy at a specific point in the recent past, and compares it with research revealing what was contemporaneously happening with one key government-funded scholarship program.FindingsThis paper is based on a comprehensive case study of the Australian Government’s Endeavour Scholarships and Fellowships program (2004–2019). Endeavour was an ambitious and expensive merit-based program with 6,600 recipients in numerous and diffuse sub-categories. The program was complex and cumbersome and lacked clear priorities, particularly in its lack of geographic focus. It missed opportunities to connect with the political zeitgeist, largely due to opaque priorities and inadequate evaluation regimes which focused entirely on outcomes for individual recipients rather than on relationships for Australia.Originality/valueThis research draws on the first academic study of the Endeavour program. Other scholarship programs (for example Australia Awards and the New Colombo Plan) have attracted considerable scholarly interest. The Endeavour research provides an additional counterpoint for studies of Australian scholarship programs and their contribution to international diplomacy. It is timely to consider this in 2024 when Australia is putting a new focus on its investment in international scholarships.

Dış Politikanın Uluslararası Öğrenci Hareketliliğindeki Rolü: Türkiye’nin Afrika Açılımı Örneği

This article examines the impact of foreign policy decisions, specifically the Africa Opening Policies, on international scholarship programs and student mobility from Africa to Türkiye. The background of Türkiye’s African policy is discussed, along with policies made by different governments. The article evaluates student exchanges and scholarships in bilateral agreements and regional cooperation between Türkiye and African countries. The central question is whether the openings in Turkey's African policy have had any effect on student mobility from Africa. To answer this question, the article uses international scholarship programs as an instrument in Turkish foreign policy in the context of the Africa Opening Policies as a single case study, which is designed to provide an in-depth understanding and contextualization of scholarship programs within foreign policymaking. Analyzing the policy documents from relevant institutions such as the Council of Higher Education, the Ministry of National Education, and the Presidency of Turks Abroad and Related Communities, the study uses process tracing methodology to show that foreign policy openings and desired relations with a particular country or region affect the design and priorities of international higher education programs. Thus, the article explores foreign policymaking as a driving factor in developing international student mobility in Türkiye.

Measuring Brazilian science diplomacy: what do international students think of Brazil?

Most of the scholarship programs come from developed countries. However, more recently the literature has analyzed international scholarship programs in developing countries, such as the case of Brazil’s PEC-PG and PEC-G. In this paper we aim at answering a simple yet important question: how have PEC-PG and PEC-G been affecting international students and researchers’ perception about Brazil? Therefore, the main objective of this research is to verify the impact of PEC-PG and PEC-G (independent variable) on the perception of foreign students (dependent variable). We conducted a survey by sending an invitation to the e-mail to 65,493 students and professors through SurveyMonkey. We aim at contributing to the literature by measuring how effective these programs have been in boosting Brazil’s image abroad. Taking into account that PECs are a consistent Brazilian program dating back to 1960’s, we expected to find international students’ positive views regarding Brazil. Students and researchers’ positive views would be the expected result of a successful scientific diplomacy policy. We consider that international scholarship programs are scientific diplomacy’s tools, in other words, ways of exercising power through the influence on perception. Our results, however, showed that the majority of respondents have a negative image of Brazil.

한국과 미국의 정부초청 장학제도 비교연구

[Purpose]The purpose of this study was to address implications and strategies for further development of the Global Korea Scholarship (GKS), a government-sponsored international scholarship program in Korea by investigating management styles and trends through a comparative analysis with the Fulbright Program.
 [Methods]This study selected cross-national study and literature review as research methods. The comprehensive literature review was conducted to produce criteria for comparison. After modifying and supplementing criteria suggested by former research, management, selection, and influence were adopted as criteria.
 [Results]As the main result of the research, firstly, the purpose of the GKS Program of Korea and the Fulbright Program of the United States are similar as they both emphasize public interest and diplomatic aspect. However, they show a substantial gap in the size of the budget and the composition of target nations. Next, while the GKS Program evaluated academic excellence based on quantitative and standardized indicators. the Fulbright Program affirmed that students may be selected based on multifaceted indicators. The third result is that both programs highlighted and utilized the network among scholars for the soft power that can be exercised after returning to their own countries.
 [Conclusion]Korea needs to promote change that can lead GKS to keep pace with global society at the government level by focusing on making it more sustainable. This change would be possible by expanding the range of target nations and diversifying the selection criteria, which will ultimately lead to attracting more quality students with diversity. Furthermore, the GKS Program should expand its influence in the global society by utilizing the existing network platform to encourage international cooperation.

Relationship of Cultural Intelligence, Student’s Innovative Work Behavior and The Influence of Interpersonal Trust

Rapidly shifting market due to globalization increases the nation's demand for young innovators. Innovators from Generation Z are needed to support the future growth of Indonesia. There are several Indonesian Government initiatives to elevate Indonesian education to grow innovations, such as establishing an international student mobility scholarship program. However, research on how the program can increase innovative work behavior for Indonesian students is still unclear. This research aims to investigate how Indonesian students perceive the impact of international student mobility on their innovative work behavior, focusing on the role of cultural intelligence and its effect on innovative work behavior through interpersonal trust. A quantitative approach was adopted for this study to examine the relationships between the variables with the assistance of SmartPLS 4.0 software. An online questionnaire was distributed to 302 respondents consisting of Indonesian students who had completed the Indonesian International Student Mobility Awards program in 2022 from all host country regions. This study demonstrates that students with higher cultural intelligence positively influence their individual innovative work behavior. Interpersonal trust also influences the process as a mediating role in the relationship between cultural intelligence and innovative work behavior among students in multicultural environments. This study can be a reference for future research and stakeholders to improve education quality by focusing on the impact of cultural intelligence on students' innovative work behavior in the context of cross-cultural interaction, specifically Indonesian students that participate in international student mobility programs from the Indonesian government. Such research has not been explored extensively beforehand, making this study valuable addition to the pedagogy and management science field.

Employment of international education graduates: issues of economy and resistance to change

Many emerging markets and middle-income countries use international scholarship programs as a long-established approach to human capital development. However, many graduates of international scholarship programs put great efforts to succeed in their home country and face many challenges when navigating the labour market. In fact, socio-economic factors including lack of jobs, saturated fields caused by an overly competitive domestic labour market, inflated salary expectations make it challenging for the international scholarship graduates to land a job after graduation. This paper explores the employment experiences of Kazakhstani government scholarship programs’ graduates majoring in science, technology, engineering and mathematics and sheds light on the challenges the graduates face when navigating the domestic labour market. An analysis based on 45 interviews shows that international scholarship graduates enjoy a positional advantage in the labor market and many of them have built a successful career. Despite this, their employment and career prospects are hampered by intertwining socio-economic and cultural factors, intergenerational clashes and scholarship program rules and regulations. Recommendations for minimizing the issues that graduates face when navigating the labor market are discussed. Keywords: graduate employability, international education, scholarship programs, labor market, employability challenges

The Right to a Favor: International Scholarships, Clientelism, and the Class Politics of Merit in Post-Revolutionary Mexico

Abstract This article considers the ways that middle-class and elite citizens in post-revolutionary Mexico pursued access to exclusive favors from the state in the 1920s and 1930s and emphasizes the overlooked role of merit as political logic in this era. Examining political discourse within clientelist exchanges through the close reading of petitions, I explore ideas about class and nation as articulated by young strivers and their families who sought scholarships for foreign study. The article argues that working within clientelism, upwardly mobile Mexicans strategically wielded merit to preserve and legitimate their status amid social tectonic shifts. Petitioners’ ideas of merit encompassed individual loyalty and patriotism, unique talents, and inherited status. I identify heritable and disciplinary merit as distinct yet compatible understandings of worthiness used by privileged citizens. These citizens claimed that exceptional Mexicans trained abroad would make an outsized contribution to the national well-being and thus deserved special rewards, an argument which anticipated rationales that the Mexican state would later embrace for its modernization policy. After 1940, the state expanded international scholarship programs and invoked the same terms that citizens had used in the early post-revolutionary period to justify socially regressive benefits providing foreign education for the already fortunate.

Applying Mixed Methods Research in Large-scale Programs – Tracing the Long-term Outcomes of Development Scholarship Alumni

Over the past 30 years, mixed methods research has become an increasingly popular tool in the social sciences. Mixed methods research can capture a diverse range of perspectives and levels of complexities not always possible with the use of a single methodological approach. It has been effectively implemented in a range of contexts to explore program outcomes and investigate research questions. This paper explores the application of a mixed methods approach in the evaluation of large-scale, long running international development scholarship programs. The particular focus is on a project implemented to consolidate evidence relating to the long-term outcomes of alumni who completed higher education in Australia as part of an Australian development scholarship. In reflecting on five years of implementation, the paper describes the benefits, complexities and challenges of this approach, with the aim of informing others embarking on large-scale, long-term program evaluations.

Overcoming Inequality of Access and Participation Through Institutional, International, and Governmental Collaboration: a Case Study

Abstract On October 27, 2021, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (eca) named St. Edward’s University as one of only 35 Fulbright hsi Leaders. On the same day, eca recognized St. Edward’s as a Top Producing Institution during the past 20 years in the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program, which funds low-income American students studying abroad. How did this happen at a small, Hispanic-Serving, majority-minority university, with a large percentage of low-income students (44% Federal Pell Grant recipients)? The answer lies in the decision by St. Edward’s to strategically create and foster a network of internal partnerships, and national and international partnerships with other universities and government-sponsored organizations, to significantly improve the quality of the educational experience for all students (especially low-income and students of color) and to multiply opportunities for them to contend and achieve in the most competitive national and international student competitions.

Chapter 4 Cosmic-Ray Physics * *Supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFA0404203), the International Scholarship Program of the MOST of China (G2021166002L), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (12147208, U2031103, U1931204) and the Science and Technology Department of Sichuan Province (2021YFSY0031)

In the first part of this Chapter the present state of knowledge from the observations of cosmic rays between 1013 and 1020 eV is summarized. This is not intended to be a complete review, but rather a broad overview of the relevant processes involving cosmic rays, including the astrophysical environments in which they take place. This overview mainly concerns experimental results and phenomenological aspects of their interpretation, therefore experiments’ description is not given but references to the vast bibliography are provided in the text. Some attempt is made to address the most popular explanations offered by theoretical models. The second part is devoted to the description of the LHAASO performance and of its capability to provide a response to several open questions, still unanswered, concerning cosmic rays above 1013 eV, highlighting which major steps forward in this field could be taken from LHAASO observations.

Knowledge Diplomacy as an Instrument of South Korea’s Foreign Policy: Theoretical Aspects and Practical Implementation in the Case of KOICA Scholarship Program

The relevance of this study derives from the limited understanding of the mechanisms of public diplomacy that are activated when scholarship programs for international students are conducted by East Asian countries, particularly South Korea. Moreover, the relevance of the topic is also determined by the scarcity of research on the role of knowledge in public diplomacy mechanisms. The author of this article analyzes South Koreas international student exchange scholarship program, the KOICA Scholarship Program. This case study analyzes the contents of official documents adopted by the Government of the Republic of Korea, documents and materials published by subordinate organizations that administer scholarship programs for international students, as well as scholarly papers on the topic of knowledge diplomacy and related topics. The novelty element is that the concept of knowledge diplomacy, which is gaining popularity worldwide almost has not been used in the Russophone academia, and the studies on South Korean exchange programs as public diplomacy instruments are also poorly represented. The analysis of official documents has shown that the concept of knowledge in the official Korean interpretation differs from the existing academic interpretations accepted in the West (e.g., Great Britain, the United States). Also, the analysis of the scholarship program showed that it only partly complies with the knowledge diplomacy goals assigned by the Government. In particular, through this scholarship Korea successfully transmits knowledge about Korean history and culture, as well as professional knowledge, while the field of knowledge exchange in the program remains unattained. The author concludes with several practical recommendations on how to improve the effectiveness of the scholarship program as a tool for knowledge diplomacy.

International scholarship for social change? Re‐contextualizing Global Korea Scholarship alumni’s perceptions of justice and diversity in South Korea

AbstractThis study examines South Korea’s international scholarship program based on responses to the Global Korea Scholarship (GKS) alumni survey to find how the participants perceive the host country’s dimensions of justice and diversity. We employ the concept of justice in terms of redistribution, recognition, and representation. Analysis of GKS alumni perceptions of Korean society revealed that international mobility programs may provide positive and negative experiences for the participants depending on their positionality in terms of gender, ethnicity, and Korean language proficiency. Some had the exclusive opportunity to access global knowledge, skills, and networks. Others were exposed to unexpected misrepresentation and misframing while living and learning in the new society. We suggest the need for multidimensional policy discussions to consider both positive and negative outcomes of international scholarship programs and their potential to play a transformative role in global higher education.Related Articles in this Special IssueAyhan, Kadir Jun, and Nancy Snow. 2021. “Introduction to the Special Issue—Global Korea Scholarship: Empirical Evaluation of a non‐Western Scholarship Program from a Public Diplomacy Perspective.” Politics & Policy 49(6): 1282–1291. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12440.Jon, Jae‐Eun, and Kadir Jun Ayhan. 2021. “Satisfied or Dissatisfied: The Determinants of Global Korea Scholarship Recipients’ Satisfaction with Life in Korea.” Politics & Policy 49(6): 1391–1414. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12437.Perez, Loarre Andreu, Myoung‐Gi Chon, Kelly Vibber, and Jeong‐Nam Kim. 2021. “Classifying Foreign Publics: Examining the Relationships Behavioral Experience, Symbolic Environment, and Communication Behaviors among Key Foreign Publics.” Politics & Policy 49(6): 1308–1322. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12439

Transformations in the Ecuadorian Scientific Landscape: A Bibliometric Analysis of the Main Publications Trends and the Role of the Scientific Networks and the Public International Scholarship Program

Like other Latin American countries, Ecuador has undergone major political and economic transformations in the last decade. Science, technology and innovation policies were at the core of some of these transformations. Despite the economic recession since 2015, the local techno-scientific landscape has experienced quantitative and qualitative transformations that need to be analyzed. This paper aims to shed light on these changes and on the Ecuadorian techno-scientific system, which so far remains under-researched. To do so, we first carry out a bibliometric analysis of more than 25,000 records with Ecuadorian affiliation from the Scopus database, published between 1920 and 2019. This allows us to reconstruct the growing complexity of local techno-scientific networks and their connections both inside and outside the country. This analysis shows a strong process of internationalization of local scientific production during the last decade, as well as a shift in research topics from publications focused mainly on health and environmental issues to research with a strong component on data and systems analysis. In a second level of analysis, we explore the relationship between these transformations in techno-scientific production and a postgraduate scholarship policy program which has sponsored Ecuadorians to study abroad over the past two decades. This analysis shows a significant correlation between the number of international scholarships granted and the number of indexed publications. The paper concludes that local transformations in techno-scientific networks are highly correlated with the internationalization process driven by this postgraduate scholarship program and in general by international scientific research training.

Coloniality prints in internationalization of higher education: The case of Brazilian and Chilean international scholarships

In this article, we argue that efforts to internationalize higher education that do not make visible the colonial legacy in the higher education space become catalysts that intensify and reproduce the power asymmetries among countries, universities, and ways of knowing. To support and illustrate our argument, we carried out an analysis of two of the largest international scholarship programs implemented by Latin American countries, namely, the Brazilian ‘Science without Borders’ and the Chilean ‘Becas Chile’ programs. Our analysis shows that Brazil and Chile, aiming to enhance their position in the so-called ‘knowledge economy’, implemented strategies of internationalization that assumed, naturalized, and possibly biased the intrinsic benefits of internationalization at the expense of local needs and realities. We also found that Brazil and Chile embrace a concept of internationalization equated with academic mobility to (almost exclusively) Western/European industrialized countries of the global North.

Coloniality prints in internationalization of higher education: The case of Brazilian and Chilean international scholarships

In this article, we argue that efforts to internationalize higher education that do not make visible the colonial legacy in the higher education space become catalysts that intensify and reproduce the power asymmetries among countries, universities, and ways of knowing. To support and illustrate our argument, we carried out an analysis of two of the largest international scholarship programs implemented by Latin American countries, namely, the Brazilian ‘Science without Borders’ and the Chilean ‘Becas Chile’ programs. Our analysis shows that Brazil and Chile, aiming to enhance their position in the so-called ‘knowledge economy’, implemented strategies of internationalization that assumed, naturalized, and possibly biased the intrinsic benefits of internationalization at the expense of local needs and realities. We also found that Brazil and Chile embrace a concept of internationalization equated with academic mobility to (almost exclusively) Western/European industrialized countries of the global North.
 Key words: Internationalization of higher education, Coloniality, Brazil, Chile, International scholarships
 How to cite this article: Chiappa, R. & Finardi, K.R. 2021. Coloniality Prints in Internationalization of Higher Education: The Case of Brazilian and Chilean International Scholarships. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South. 5(1): 25-45. DOI: 10.36615/sotls.v5i1.161.
 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The Role of International Educational Exchange in Turkish Foreign Policy as a Reconstructed Soft Power Tool

International educational exchange has been used frequently as a foreign policy instrument by leading actors of the international arena since the post-Second World War years. This article on the other hand, aims to throw light on the policies and actions of a middle power; namely, Turkey, which has been designing various international scholarship programs for foreign policy ends since the early 1990s. Following a brief evaluation of the international educational exchange programs launched by the USA, Russia, the UK, the EU and China for foreign policy purposes, the study examines the Great Student Exchange Project introduced by Turkey in 1992 to carve out an influential place for itself in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. It will then delve into the Türkiye Scholarships Program, Mevlana Exchange Program and the scholarship programs of the Türkiye Diyanet Foundation, which have been introduced during the Justice and Development Party period to build up and/or boost friendly ties between Turkey and various targeted countries. The study finalizes by investigating the impact of these scholarship programs on the realization of Turkey’s foreign policy goals by exploring to what extent the sending countries align their foreign policy preferences with those of Turkey through analysis of their voting behaviours in the United Nations General Assembly.

Preventing Brain Drain: Kazakhstan’s Presidential “Bolashak” Scholarship and Government Regulations of Intellectual Migration

This article considers the Republic of Kazakhstan's internal intellectual migration within the scope of the Bolashak International Scholarship Program which aims to train highly-killed specialists at the best universities in the world. The analysis covers mechanisms of public investment in training of highly-qualified specialists, regulatory measures to promote employment opportunities nationally and the geographical scope of internal-intellectual migration of Bolashak graduates. A survey of Bolashak graduates assesses the country’s labour market capacity and detects factors affecting migration among Kazakh youth. The study showed that most graduates of the Bolashak program want to contribute to the development of the country, but they are not satisfied with the level of wages in Kazakhstan. Migratory moods were noted only among graduates aged 23-28 years, while older graduates aged 29 to 35 still preferred to stay at home. Moreover, among the first group of graduates, the priority was given to the standard of living in the country of destination rather than professional opportunities. Graduates from the second group were more interested in career prospects rather than in the standard of living in the country of destination. This research was funded by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Grant No. АР05136246).

INTERNATIONALIZATION OF EDUCATION: INTERNATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAMS AS A TOOL FOR STUDENTS’ ACADEMIC MOBILITY

On the basis of materials of a sociological study, the authors consider international scholarship programs as a tool for academic mobility. Students’ academic mobility is a factor and condition for the internationalization of higher education and the development of modern universities. Based on a questionnaire survey of undergraduate students (n=250), interviews with postgraduates (master degree) (n=12), as well as interviews with MOFCOM Scholarship program fellows (n=3), the article states that students are ready to join international academic mobility programs and compete for international scholarships to study primarily in European countries, the USA, and China. At the same time, students are interested in scholarships implemented at the state level and at the level of specific universities. A factor for choosing a scholarship program is, first of all, the scholarship amount which should cover, along with tuition, transport costs, accommodation, food, and cultural activities. Studying in a foreign university allows students to improve their foreign language and serves as a factor in strengthening their position of a future specialist in the labour market.

University teaching and citizenship education as sustainable development in Ghana and Nigeria: insight from international scholarship program alumni

The Sustainable Development Goals call for a “substantial increase” of international scholarships. However, the links between international student mobility and sustainable development remain unclear. By examining the perceived outcomes of a closed higher education scholarship program, this study explores the ways that alumni perceive their contributions to the development of their home countries of Ghana and Nigeria. Findings indicate that scholarship alumni from Ghana and Nigeria value and advocate for education as a mechanism for social change and view both formal and informal education as significant mechanisms for development. Specifically, Ghanaian and Nigerian alumni noted two discrete ways that education leads to social change: (1) university teaching and (2) citizenship, voter, and human rights education. This research aims to contribute to literature about the influence of scholarship program alumni on their home countries and to contribute to understanding of international higher education’s role in the sustainable development agenda.

Examining a model of scholarship for social justice

The purpose of this study is to measure the impact of international scholarship programs for social justice – a case study of the Ford Foundation International Fellowships Program (IFP), the first model of scholarships for social justice. The human capability approach advanced by Amartya Sen is selected to conceptualize the measurement of the impacts. This study attempts to propose an alternative approach, which allows scholarship sponsors to see scholarship impact on the matter of people’s capabilities, rather than economic growth. By using the data from the 2012 IFP Alumni surveys ( n = 1,794, 49.4% female, 50.6% male) and the fellows data ( n = 422, 47.6% female, 52.4% male) collected in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 by the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, this study examined the relationships of the very foundational rationale behind the creation of IFP as well as the proposed structural equation model built upon the human capability approach with fellows’ impacts on social justice in their home country. Structural equation modelling was employed as the statistical technique. The results of the analyses revealed that: (a) fellows’ success of choices were positively related to fellows’ impacts on social justice; and (b) fellows’ capabilities and achieved functionings positively predicted fellows’ impacts on social justice. The proposed structural equation model was proved to be theoretically sound and explain the data well.