Comments

Hi Joel, Great series on the Australian Scholarship program. It’s interesting that we are still wedded to a model from the 1950’s – the Colombo Plan type scholarships, and the innovation that has occurred in the education sector in the last thirty years isn’t reflected in the current scholarship program. Australian universities have been offering transnational programs for over 20 years and have a highly regarded international track record in this regard. Students can study for an Australian degree anywhere in the world, either on the campus of an Australian university offshore, or through distance. Latest Australian Education International statistics show 107,000 students in this delivery stream. Utilising this lower cost option, together with sandwich courses involving a year or so at the Australian campus, to gain the benefit of an “Australian” cultural experience, could really make the scholarship more cost effective if scholarships are to be retained as a core element of the aid program. The program could also include the option for distance masters study, with a period of professional fellowship in Australia, in the way the DFID scholarship program does. The present structure though doesn’t encourage the universities to drive greater innovation or costs savings in delivery – even through joint degree awards with foreign universities as well, which would develop local capacity. While the joint degree option has been around awhile, there hasn’t been a real driver for uptake. The scholarship program is also directed to higher education, and little consideration of one of the gaps emerging, such as the middle level technical professionals.

Thanks for this interesting series of blogs. I was surprised that nowhere did you mention the possibility that the standard graduate programs available at Australian universities may not be appropriate for beneficiaries given the limited educational foundation with which many start. I'm thinking especially here of Pacific students equipped with a high-school diploma and bachelor's degree from their home country. However innately talented these students are - and I've no doubt many are brilliant - I suspect they are ill-prepared to take on graduate work designed to build on a (first-rate) Australian secondary and tertiary education. If I'm right, the risk is that instead of instilling students with knowledge, skills and confidence, these scholarships instead leave students feeling like intellectual frauds and failures. It would be interesting to see what share of students that start their scholarships signed up to more technical courses (e.g., economics) end up switching to others (e.g., public policy, social policy, economics history), for the reasons I describe. One simple solution if my supposition is right: encourage students to use their scholarships to undertake a second bachelor's degree. This is precisely what many Rhodes scholars do at Oxford so there is no inherent reason why it should be considered an inferior choice.

Hi Joel and others, I've followed your articles and comments with interest. My group at UQ International Development has been primarily involved in delivery of short courses for DFAT but there may be learning that could be applied to longer scholarships. All of our short courses include a Return to Work Plan that focuses awardees, before they depart for training, on what they expect to learn and how they might implement this upon return. A version of this might be considered in some longer term scholarships to achieve a development outcome from studies - it may not be appropriate to all studies. We spend a deal of time on soft skills - drafting work plans and M&E frameworks, developing and delivering presentations etc. So the ideal development scholarship should be more than technical learning but of course there would be a cost in broadening the scope. We deliver training both in Australia and in recipient countries. We don't find cost savings through this approach - costs are relatively similar if you are using Australian lecturers - but we do find advantages in contextualising the delivery. Sandwich programs have been around for decades and can be a good way to reduce costs and improve context/application - not sure to what extent they are still used. There is much more that could be done with alumni networks and I understand that this is continually being discussed/developed at DFAT. At the moment scholarship holders naturally retain a primary allegiance to their university, rather than to DFAT. An effective alumni system is needed so that DFAT and others can rapidly identify and contact alumni for future engagement. There have been many ongoing connections between students and supervisors through ACIAR programs in the agriculture space. It would be great if other sectors had similar opportunities, but not all sectors get an ACIAR. Your ADRA linkage suggestion is a good one as long as alumni can be readily identified and contacted. Regards, Ben

Hi Joel, Thanks for this great series on scholarships. I wondered whether you have looked at 'capacity drain' (perhaps drain isn't the best word, maybe churn?) that might occur when the best and brightest are plucked out of organisations and governments and sent to Australia and other countries on scholarships, particularly in small island or LDC/fragile contexts? In Timor, for example, some people I talked with were exasperated that as soon as an employee of an NGO or government department became an effective performer in their job they would disappear out of the country for a few years on a scholarship and someone new would need to be trained up to fill their shoes... and then, if that person was a good performer, the cycle would repeat. Nobody wanted to deny the high performer the opportunity of an international-standard education (and you can't stop people from changing jobs and so on) but some development people would lament that the one person who seemed to be able to 'get things done' or was 'really working hard' would suddenly disappear and then projects or policy would just stagnate as someone new tried to get up to speed. There was an abundance of different scholarships programs operating in the country too, some funded by the TL govt and many others by donors, so it would be interesting to see Australian scholarships as part of that bigger picture. Can there be such a thing as international scholarship saturation, or can you never have too many? And sure, people come back from scholarships, so its hard to know whether this effect was more just a short-term annoyance for expat aid worker types rather than a real issue. I doubt it is an issue in bigger countries. Perhaps some of the options you've outlined in this post, like MOOCs, could be options for keeping talented people in their jobs in-country, while also learning and expanding their horizons and skills? Different modes of delivery could also help reach underrepresented groups. For example, I knew of some young married women in Timor who wanted to apply and go on a scholarship to Australia, but they already had children and faced resistance from their families. Even with the financial support of a scholarship, there are other things that can stop people dropping everything and moving overseas for a couple of years, so it would be good to be able to offer them other high-quality options.

Hi Joel, Again, a really interesting series. Your second suggestion is something that other sponsors have certainly tried to negotiate with universities, with mixed results. And in the past, AusAID did have a 'discount' when there was a limited number of universities and TAFEs awardees could attend. However, given the significant amount of monitoring and reporting required by DFAT (on top of the requirements for 'standard' international students), it is difficult for universities to justify or afford a cut to fees. Supporting students during their studies costs money, and universities are contractually obligated to provide the best possible support to their DFAT sponsored students. Those universities with a large cohort of DFAT sponsored students may be better placed to offer discounts - but this may further disadvantage other institutions struggling to provide adequate support to their much smaller cohorts. It is a useful debate though, and I think DFAT are well advanced at looking at transnational and sandwich degree models - which offer some time in Australia but the majority of delivery in their home country. Regards, Anna

Thanks for these posts Joel and for your thoughts about the effectiveness of scholarships. I would like to add some thoughts about how this activity can be made more effective in relation to countries from which scholarship awardees are drawn and to which they return. There are, I believe, opportunities to support returning awardees (especially those who have undertaken postgraduate study), regardless of the sector in which they find themselves, to use their studies/research (both in terms of academic content and social/personal development) as the basis for in-country networking and peer to peer development. This does not need to be high-tech or expensive. DFAT (via post) could provide funding to support a seminar series or something similar at which awardees presented their own work to colleagues and peers as the basis for discussions, knowledge sharing and professional networking. This type of activity is already happening in some places on an informal basis. For those working in the public sector (where a lot of awardees come from) this would be a really useful way of supporting the development of bureaucratic leadership, something that is much needed and often under-rated.

"In fact, micro, small and medium enterprises are fundamental drivers of economic growth, innovation and economic resilience in developing countries, accounting for between 70% and 95% of employment." This is a serious post hoc, ergo proper hoc error. The evidence on the importance of SMEs for growth is decidedly mixed, and that is interpreting it kindly. To cite a recent paper investigating the effect of firm size "Misallocation, Establishment Size, and Productivity" by Pedro Bento and Diego Restuccia, published as a working paper by the University of Toronto, the authors find that small firms exhibit enormous productivity losses compared to large firms as a result of low productivity and low investment arising from misallocation of resources. While there is no doubt that SMEs employ a large proportion of workers in poorer countries, it does not follow that they are therefore "fundamental drivers of economic growth, innovation and economic resilience in developing countries". Larger firms are more productive, pay more and have better working conditions than small firms. This implies that policies should be directed at establishing the conditions for small firms to grow and become large.

Dear Luc Thanks for your thoughtful response to our post. I agree that the term ‘innovation’ is overused across many sectors of society. We have seen a wave from the sources of economic growth being ‘information’, to ‘knowledge’, to ‘innovation’, to I suspect now moving towards ‘entrepreneurship’ (think of Obama’s JOBS Act). I agree that there are many forms of innovation – some radical and ‘new’ to a field, but others far more incremental, and as you suggest, perhaps focused on improving current systems and services. In regards to mobilizing private sector investment, the global ground swell around impact investing and the rapid take up of Social Impact Bonds (even though preliminary results are only just filtering in) makes me optimistic that there are many investors out there who are actively seeking financial and social return. Stanford Social Innovation Review reported on studies that showed such potential. For example, with the transfer of $30 trillion in wealth from Baby Boomers to Millennials, that <a href="http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/millennials_will_bring_impact_investing_mainstream" rel="nofollow">50% of Millennials</a> wanted to use their wealth to help others. I think this mobilization of capital will indeed stand beside existing foreign aid programs, bilateral and multi-lateral. I agree with your point that better collaborations and connections amongst stakeholders are also necessary – not necessarily more committees, but structured and active platforms and mechanisms that assist in doing this, such as Social Stock Exchanges and DFAT’s proposed Innovation Hub. Kind regards Danielle

Danielle and Mel, Great piece and very timely! It's interesting that the countries that could benefit from these new models, and not sure this is something that would apply to all opportunities, BUT on the receiving end of "aid/investment" this is still news. I teach at two very well known universities and none of the other universities actually are introducing students to these new concepts. Governments as well as organizations at all level are still in the mindset that Official Aid is here to stay. Several countries have managed to move to Middle Income Status but at what price? The somewhat known -- Middle Income Trap -- to good to be poor and not rich enough to compete. The OECD measurement method to categorize a country status when it comes to growth could be compared to the original "Human Development Index". The development world eventually realized that the HDI wasn't the best tool to evaluate poverty levels and now have opted for a MPI. Maybe the OECD could also move to a more useful ways to qualify countries...something like the Multidimensional Poverty Index. The majority of MICs are not prepared to move from traditional aid to private aid. A recent article from CGDEV and the Brookings Institute highlighted the problem with Official Aid...with 26 donors, countries still have to deal with fragmentation, duplication, and waste. How would these new source of funding change the landscape or further continue to fragment development efforts. There aren't much discussions about capacity building efforts that would come with innovation. The problem is rarely money...otherwise the private sector would be doing it already. What is the incentive now that would move the private sector or private investors in this sector? Did the world of investment changed so drastically that they would be prepared to risk their own capital for "social good"? What could Australian Aid do different? Will they go where investors are not interested or they will also look for the next Facebook in development? Is this "innovation" something sustainable or just a "fad"? I think the term "innovation" is overused in development. Is what you describe qualifies as innovation or improvement? -- Innovation differs from improvement in that innovation refers to the notion of doing something different rather than doing the same thing better (source wikipedia). I believe that the opportunity lies in connecting all stakeholders instead of finding a bunch of new ways of doing the same thing ....and not sure it will end up being better at the end. Yes we can demonstrate success...but I can also talk about success when one person survives a plane crash!!

Integration brought with it uncertainty for the local O-based staff (now LES). At the same time it also brought with it opportunities for the local staff. Change is a process that has to be properly managed to mitigate consequences and/or expectations. Change with Integration brought with it realization amongst local staff that they should start consider other opportunities outside of the new DFAT. In fact ALL local staff should thank DFAT (or former AusAID) for bringing them this far with the skills they've developed. I am Local Staff with DFAT at Sols Post. I see Integration as an OPPORTUNITY to explore beyond!

I wholeheartedly echo earlier comments on the importance of national staff in managing, implementing and guiding Australia's aid program. I am seeing the same thing happen in other countries where the aid program works, not just Indonesia - this loss of expertise that will only leave the aid program weaker. It's good to see that this critical part of the AusAID abolition is being discussed, and I can only hope that such discussion will have an impact where it really matters.

Thanks Margaret for this research presenting data which I guess you are still developing. Though i would like to drop a lot of remarks I will just stick to the expat-nationals salary disparity in the extractive industry. The idea that the industry hires 92% Nationals and 7% Expats is a misnomer when you look at how much cash spin-off actually reaches the wider PNG households. If you take the average annualiseed wage of the nationals and expats and compare the disparity, you will come to realize that the 7% consumes 58% of the total manpower budget and the 92% nationals you boasted only receive 42% of the manpower budget in any given year. Get some more data and you will prove this. That's when you will realise that you will need to amend some of your remarks with respect to the 'benefits' the mine represents for the wider PNG Community. Not everyone benefits from the royalty pay outs.