Comments

From my perspective scholarships should be considered primarily as aid. No doubt there are ample diplomatic benefits. Just look at how the Colombo Plan led to good, long-standing relationships between Australia and the countries that the Colombo Plan students came from. Or, more recently, look at how the training of Vietnamese and Cambodian scholarship holders has led to very good relationships between now-senior members of government and research institutions in those countries with the Australian government and research institutions. No doubt too there are cases where scholarships are handed out by Australian officials and developing country officials not on the basis of merit. These instances are to be deplored. But scholarships should be principally about aid that is intended to lead to better living standards in those countries receiving the scholarships. However, I would like to suggest that we should think of the provision of scholarships somewhat differently than the way in which normal evaluation processes are undertaken. I think of scholarships as similar to the funding of research. Many research projects are funded but only a few are successful. However, the payoff to the few successful ones are usually so large that their benefits far outweigh the cost of all others. Take the field of economics. If we can train one indiviual in economics who can be instrumental in having needed economic reforms implemented, the result can be increases in the economic growth rate of the country that last indefinitely. A one percent permanent increase in the growth rate of a Vietnam would more than cover all of Australia's foreign aid. I know of cases where such benefits have flowed from the high-level training of scholarship holders. This view of the scholarship program implies that if we are to carry out a realistic appraisal of the program, a much more individualistic assessment of the benefits has to be undertaken. Of course, this would be very difficult. But the counting of how many students return home from training, or other such measurements, is really not providing any kind of accurate account and leads us to worry about the wrong kinds of issues.

"I paid a bride" or "I paid a bribe"? Both worthy of investigation, but only one has a website right now.

Well there's the Demographic & Health Survey DHS 2006, which only was released last year, valuable material and shows continued very high child and maternal mortality rates, but perhaps need to be cautious about trends from 1996 (which would suggest a major increased rate), I'm told 1986 data may be more reliable which shows a steadier, but still unsatisfactory rate. The HIES is meant to be released any day, but we've heard that for a while and when a user meeting was to be held a few months back it was cancelled at the last minute. Rural sampling was also done and we're expecting to be able to use that for a financial competency survey and are told it's sufficiently robust. The 2010, whoops 2011 Census....will need to update ourselves on progress, but I'm told its not been helped with some injuries, including on the part of member(s) of the Aust support team,....so again perhaps we shouldn't hold our breath and anyway output won't be till well after the 2012 Election... [Download the national report from the 2006 DHS <a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6190378/2006%20DHS%20National%20Report.pdf" rel="nofollow">here</a> (140MB)]

Thanks Paul, Statistical surveys are an important tool for assessing whether the benefits of the commodity boom are reaching the broader population. In particular Household Income and Expenditure Surveys (HIES) can be used to track what is happening to household expenditures and levels of poverty. The last PNG Household Income and Expenditure Survey was done in 1996. According to the <a href="http://www.nso.gov.pg/71-household-income-n-expenditure-census-2009-2010" rel="nofollow">NSO website</a>, a new 2009-10 HIES will only cover PNG's five urban centres (Port Moresby, Lae, Goroka, Madang and Rabaul/Kokopo), which would tell us nothing about what is happening in rural areas. I've heard rumours that some rural sampling was done, but haven't been able to verify this or ascertain whether it is sufficient to do detailed sub-national analysis of household expenditure. In particular whether it would be sufficient to do the kind of detailed <a href="http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTPA/0,,contentMDK:20219777~menuPK:462078~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:430367,00.html" rel="nofollow">poverty mapping</a> that the World Bank is supporting in Fiji. Such poverty mapping is a tool that would be invaluable for better understanding regional disparities in PNG. According to the NSO's survey budget estimate, the whole survey activities will cost the Government around K6 million. Do you know where the survey has got to or can others shed some more light on this? What other statistical evidence is available on development indicators in rural areas?

David, thank you for sharing your views on guaranteed work schemes. A good example of this kind of workfare program is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act scheme in India which provides up to 100 days of guaranteed work per year, mainly on public works projects, at minimum wage for anyone below the poverty line. You can find out more about NREGA on their <a href="http://nrega.nic.in/netnrega/home.aspx" rel="nofollow">website</a>. For a deeper analysis, you can also look at some of the evaluations: for example, <a href="http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/genrep/rep_NREGA.pdf" rel="nofollow">this on</a>e by the Indian National Planning Commission.

Trouble is guaranteed jobs does not mean they will spend their money on food for their children and guaranteed jobs means there is no incentive to work or have the right attitude etc. If people can not loose their jobs which are guaranteed work out put would more than likely drop so production of food and other commodities could drop creating foood shortages The free market has produced a surplus of food. What is needed is a free market solution to distribution.

Tim, The immediate constraints on agriculture are lack of reliable (or even any) road or transport access, low producer prices for many years (until recently) and various high costs, law and order problems (with crop theft etc), all combining to discourage farmer's interests. It's not all about largeholder production; smallholders have demonstrated that they can greatly increase production when they have the incentive, and of course tree crop exports formerly largely produced on estates have largely been replaced by smallholders for most crops. However, with good estate-smallholder support on an agro-nucleus basis, smallholders can circumvent some of the constraints of poor infrastructural and services provided by government. Some landowners working with agricultural companies have demonstrated that current land laws don't need to be a constraint to genuine agricultural development, and the recent amendments (which have not yet been gazetted) empower landowners further to utilise portions of their land more commercially if they so choose. These SABLs, however, undermine genuine agricultural development and dis-empower the landowners. The genuine agricultural development entails thorough work by landowners and companies in identify the owners and securing free and fair consent with respect to agreed portions of their land; these SABLs commit whole community, even wards and sub-districts' land, including villages, food gardens and tree corps (as well of course as sought-after forest land). It's a recipe for community dissent; some have already complained that they wouldn't want to grab their neighbours' land (as in some approved SABLs) as it would great lasting antipathy. So this is a scheme which attracts short term extractive activities, not genuine agricultural investment or sound land management, whether by smallholders and/o with large investment partners with a longer term horizon. The genuine major agricultural investors (as well as landowners) are very concerned about this SABL free for all.

Another method of providing education and enhancing skills for people from developing countries is through in-country education/training/support. As an adjunct to out-of-country scholarships, in-country approaches can offer culturally appropriate, accessible, affordable, relevant and grounded education & training. Our recent experiences of providing in-country training & support in the Pacific, in the field of operational research in health, have confirmed to me the value of this approach. We have found people are keen to learn, keen to develop as researchers, and eager to change local health systems as a result of their research. The local people involved would be very unlikely to ever be able to access the current scholarships or education abroad. Increasing scholarships, investment and aid that supports an in-country approach needs to be further considered.

My own research study on cultural identity and the AusAID Scholarship program has found that key drivers for the scholarship program tend to be overly related to Australian economic and political interest. One could argue that this is indeed an overarching and explicit aim of the broader aid program, however it is also reasonable to expect an outcome that shows where the program supports poverty alleviation, promotes capacity and international linkages. This is currently unclear and not evidence-based. Given the spirit of improving development effectiveness and promoting transparency, it is unacceptable that the Australian public is still waiting for an external assessment of the program, in particular to understand if indeed it has met some of its key stated objectives. The assumption that the benefits of the scholarship program will ‘trickle-down’ to alleviate poverty is clearly unsubstantiated and there is cause to argue that scholarship aid may be of greater benefit to Australia, particularly its higher education industry which requires a critical mass of students to support research and teaching in Australian universities. For some reason, the Scholarship program has escaped the rigour of a full assessment which is strange given the international emphasis on development effectiveness and amount of resourcing spent on evaluating other Australian aid programs. Overall Australian Scholarship Award impact studies or reports on development effectiveness have been seriously lacking, with the last audit of the AusAID scholarship program conducted way back in 1999 by the Australian National Audit Organisation which then noted that performance indicators to measure the outcomes of the program were lacking, in terms of measuring how students contribute to their country’s development on return. The review of the aid program in its entirety and a focus on the scholarship program is certainly long overdue. In spite of the scale and longevity of the Australian scholarship program, there has been an overall lack of accountability to the Australian public in terms of understanding the program’s effectiveness. This constitutes a major, unresolved public policy issue that requires addressing 'sooner' rather than 'later'. It is perhaps unfortunate that requests for information about the program have not been met in the absence of the Freedom of Information application and I too have experienced blockages to accessing broad documentation about the program as well as access to publicly held documents stored in the AusAID library, which for some reason is no longer publicly accessed. As a development worker and now researcher, I have personally encountered many impressive former scholarship awardees who I have worked alongside but I am also aware of program challenges. Not the least of these relates to the re-entry process, which I understand is being closely looked at by AusAID, but with the information closely guarded within the bureaucracy. Given that aid programs are inherently complex and there are many lessons to learn, with broad scope for feedback from a variety of sources, why not open the possibilities for improving the scholarship program, starting with bureaucratic will to share information and promote public transparency, in the interests of good governance and effective aid programming.

I am currently working in development in Nepal with many people who have been the recipients of developed country scholarship programs. The almost universal experience of my fellow development professionals of working with these recipients is the same: they have sufficient technical skills but their work culture and lack of experience working in efficient organisations prevents them from reaching their potential. They have never worked in workplaces where administrative practices are streamlined, financial transparency is ensured, effective management is modelled and deadlines are met. It is often these characteristics, rather than technical skills, which prevent INGOs and International organisations from hiring local staff. The Migration Act student visa prevents those undertaking AusAID scholarships from undertaking substantial work during their study and they must leave Australia upon completion on their course. This regulation prevents them from working in Australian workplaces, which would be an equally valuable experience as attending lectures at an Australian university. I believe the scholarships should be reframed from a 'study scholarship' to a 'study and work scholarship' which allows recipients to work in Australia for a period of time before returning to their home country. The experience of working in Australia would vastly multiply the effects of the new technical skills.

This World Bank report comes to different conclusions about Indonesia's rice import policies. http://j.mp/jZmQmy

Dear Markus, Thank you for taking the time to write a thoughtful response to yesterday's blog on scholarships. It sounds like you were put through the mill getting the Freedom of Information request from AusAID and it is good that you persevered so that we can all read the reports and have a more informed discussion on the aid program. You've clearly given the issues a lot of thought, so here are three debates that I'd like your views on: 1) <strong>A debate about the debate.</strong> We've been running a series of blogs on the aid program over the last six months or so, and there are a growing number of other blogs on Australian aid issues. We also ran a conference on doubling aid in February. One issue that has struck us is that the debate among academics and aid practitioners (e.g. budget support, aid transparency, independent evaluation) is very different to the debate in the political sphere (e.g. cutting funding to indonesian schools, using aid to tackle Islamic extremism) and the mainstream media (e.g. expensive consultants, aid fraud). I liked that your article moved the debate from aid fraud to development effectiveness. Why is there a divergence of debates, and which debates should we be having? 2) <strong>A debate about the development effectiveness of scholarships</strong>. My post isn't a rebuttal of the points raised in your article, but rather a rebalancing to include additional information from AusAID and flag the ANAO and Aid Review reports, which will important inputs inputs into a discussion on the effectiveness of scholarships. You make some strong points on waste in the scholarships program, and like you I am skeptical, which is why I hope the ANOA report and Aid Review will zero in on this. Then there are then broader views on the scholarships program that should be considered, including from beneficiaries who have gone on to play important leadership roles in their countries, and a discussion of how scholarships fit alongside an approach to capacity building and investment in local tertiary institutions. 3) A<strong> debate on transparency and accountability</strong>. This is where I strongly agree with you and we've been running blogs on this issue. The Australian public deserves much better information on how aid is spent and this is necessary for a healthy public debate and for accountability. AusAID needs to be more proactive in sharing and communicating information, which is why I am encouraged--even I don't get 'excited' by such things--by their draft agency plan for the Information Publication Scheme. Australia has also signed up to the International Initiative on Aid Transparency (IATI) and Sandy Hollway has called for 'warts and all' transparency. If AusAID follows through on this, then it will an exciting opportunity to improve aid effectiveness. Thank you again for taking the time to write a thoughtful response to my blog and I hope you will continue to read our articles on aid transparency, accountability and aid effectiveness. Best regards, Matt