Understanding how education scholarships are distributed in the Pacific

The first of its kind, the interactive dashboard supports donor and recipient countries to identify trends, gaps and overlaps in their tertiary education scholarships in the Pacific. This is important for supporting improvements in local skills, knowledge and ability within the region.

Importantly, the dashboard showcases a way to improve monitoring and reporting of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.b: to expand higher education scholarships for developing countries. Unlike other monitoring attempts, the dashboard focuses on official development assistance (ODA) from high-income countries, as well as contributions from developing countries, and non-state actors. The dashboard demonstrates how regional data collection can enable collective contributions towards SDG 4.b.

Part of a pilot study funded by the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Centre, the dashboard shows a monitoring approach focused on thematic indicator SDG 4.b.2 – the number of higher education scholarships awarded by beneficiary country. Until now, SDG 4.b monitoring has focused on funding, relying solely on global indicator 4.b.1 – the volume of ODA flows for international scholarships. By collecting data on the number and range of scholarships and visualising through the dashboard, a more useful indication of progress towards SDG 4 can be made.

The pilot study involved working with national scholarship coordination units across the Pacific Islands and international donors. A rapid online scan identified 62 scholarship awards explicitly seeking applications from citizens of Pacific Island countries. Of these scholarships, 42 were funded by non-Pacific Islands donors, 15 were funded by Pacific Islands donors, and 5 scholarships by multilateral agencies and organisations.

The study data showed that in 2022 alone, 18 scholarship programs awarded 6,038 scholarships, with women making up 50% of participants and 12.5% studying outside their home country. Although not a comprehensive collection of scholarship investments in the Pacific, these insights and comparisons of scholarship investments are important and previously unavailable.

Inconsistencies in the way data is collected and recorded for scholarships across the region created limitations for the pilot study. To strengthen future scholarships monitoring, common agreement is needed on how disbursements are recorded – year awarded or the year the study began – and alignment of broad fields of study with international classification standards. Agreement on how to record double degrees, modes of study and equity groups such as gender, disability and minority groups is also needed.

To build on the regional cooperation established through this project, ACER recommends that scholarship donors and Pacific Islands countries: 

1. Adopt indicator SDG 4.b.2 to monitor scholarship trends by the number of tertiary-level scholarships awarded by the receiving country, and continue this pilot across the Pacific Islands
2. Build consensus amongst scholarship stakeholders on how data should be captured
3. Engage in a Pacific Islands regional scholarships forum
4. Expand coordinated scholarships data collection to other regions.

This study has demonstrated how coordinated collaboration by donor and recipient countries can provide valuable insights on education scholarships in the Pacific Islands. With input from additional scholarship donor and recipient countries to complete this scholarship mapping the study could contribute to improving understanding skills and knowledge development in the region.

Further reading

View the Monitoring Pacific scholarships interactive dashboard

Read the Sustainable Development Goal 4.b in the Pacific – A pilot study for monitoring tertiary education scholarships for development report