46th Annual Report - Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in ...

Maximising impact: life after scholarshipsScholarship providers have varied objectives.Their aim may be to help individuals from a specific backgroundor to help them overcome particular disadvantages, or to assist the development or prestige of the hostinstitution. Alternatively, scholarships may be offered as a means of attracting skilled labour to a particularcountry or region.CHARLES PARKINSONgained his DPhil in ModernHistory (University ofOxford) in 2003. He isnow employed at aMelbourne law firm, aswell as tutoring in law atTrinity College, Universityof Melbourne. While atOxford, he published hisfirst book; an examinationof the drafting of Victoria’sconstitution. Morerecently, Oxford UniversityPress has accepted a bookproposal based on hisdoctoral thesis, whichlooked at bills of rights inthe British Commonwealth.THE NEXT GENERATIONThere might even be multiple objectives for thesame programme. In the case of the Commission,our overwhelming priority when using DFID funds isto produce skilled labour and research findings thatwill benefit developing countries. With Foreign andCommonwealth Office funds, we seek to make animpact on wider international relations, and inparticular the standing of the United Kingdom. Ofcourse, these objectives are quite compatible witheach other.Achievement of these objectives depends on howwe select candidates, the type of training andsupport scholars receive during their awards andwhat they go on to accomplish following theirawards. While the first two of these are largely withinthe Commission’s control, the third is not. It mayeven be beyond the control of award holdersthemselves. A frequent frustration of highly qualifiedstaff returning to some developing countries, forexample, is the lack of equipment and otherinfrastructure to allow them to fully utilise theirnewly acquired skills.What can scholarship providers do to maximiseimpact? One approach is to impose formal obligationsonto award holders; for example CommonwealthScholarship and Fellowship holders arerequired to sign a declaration that they will return totheir home country following graduation. In somecountries, this is reinforced by a system of bonds,which define the minimum time they are expected tospend at home on completion of their award, andimpose financial penalties for those not meetingthem.Requirements of this type can be valuable inemphasising the objectives of the scheme. Howeverthey are notoriously difficult to enforce and, ifconfined to the early years of a career only, areunlikely to have the longer term impact required.From an international relations standpoint, formalrequirements might also not be the best way to win‘hearts and minds’.Other approaches depend on maintainingcontacts in the long term. During the past six years,the Commission’s alumni programme has succeededin tracing over 33% of the 15,000 plus individuals tohave held awards in the United Kingdom over thepast fifty years. This percentage is rising all the time,due both to continuing alumni tracing activity andnew cohorts. This activity led, in 2003, to thepublication of the first Directory of CommonwealthScholars and Fellows.Tracer studies provide both a basis for furtheractivity and a tool for assessing impact to date. Weknow, for example, that the overwhelming majorityof award holders continue to work in their owncountry, that the majority work in the public sectorand that (not surprisingly given the background ofapplicants) higher education is the single mostcommon destination, post-award. We also haveevidence that a high proportion reach the mostsenior levels of their profession, and that manymaintain contact with the UK – through mechanismsranging from nominal contact with their universityalumni association to involvement in professionalbodies and collaborative research projects.Now that we have an increased knowledge of ouralumni, can we do anything to influence their impact(and behaviour)? Traditional alumni activity seeks toachieve goodwill through alumni magazines andreceptions and in some cases the operation of alumnisocieties. Can the CSC learn anything by adoptingthese methods?To some extent, we can. Alumni receptions havebeen held in over a dozen countries in the past fouryears, often hosted by the British High Commission.Our alumni newsletter – Omnes – is circulated to theCSC’s wide range of contacts. These activities havehad an important role in networking, tracing formeraward holders and raising the profile of theprogramme. In some cases, they have led to thecreation of more permanent alumni groups.Yet activity of this kind is ad-hoc in nature,depending on the time and goodwill of alumni – adiverse group with many other responsibilities. TheCommonwealth Scholarship Commission quicklyrecognised that additional communication was12 Commonwealth Scholarship Commission