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Tracer Study A tracer study will track Bhutanese who pursued higher education in Australia through its scholarships to gauge the impact it has had on Bhutan’s development.
It is part of a development impact plan, which will also be done in other Asian countries receiving Australian awards for studies.
In Bhutan, the South Asia Scholarship Program’s (SASP) office in Thimphu and the AusAID office in New Delhi will carry out the study on Australian Development Scholarship (ADS) and Australian Leadership Awards (ALA) under the AusAID umbrella. Endeavour Awards, an official from the SASP said, will most likely come under the same umbrella in the coming years.
“No such impact study was done so far in South Asia,” the SASP official said. The study will trace scholars to organisations and offices, where they are, how they’ve done, and see if they’ve brought about any changes, big or small, in their community, work place, or larger society.
One way to trace past scholars is through an alumni association, for which scholars can register online through the SASP website. “The presence of proper data collection or an alumni association, which would have otherwise streamlined and systemised the program and its recipients, was lacking,” an official with AusAID office in New Delhi, said.
The SASP presence in the country, the official said, was also to help AusAID in New Delhi focus on policy and strategy issues, by bearing the administrative and related paperwork. “Now the office can focus on policy and strategy issues and priority sectors identified by the Bhutanese government,” he said.
The priority sectors at present were health, education, good governance and natural resource management. “We’d like to propose increasing the sectors, so that a wider pool of candidates can apply and become eligible in future,” he said. “The sectors will be based on gaps identified in the government’s human resource master plan.”
The official, who was in Thimphu for the pre-departure briefing for the next lot of Australian award recipients leaving in 2012, said Bhutanese have been studying in Australia since the 1960s under the Colombo Plan, to which the Australian government contributed. One of the first recipients of the Colombo Plan scholarships was the Royal University of Bhutan’s Vice Chancellor, Dasho Pema Thinley.
The official also said, while it was noticeable Bhutanese scholars were coming back and contributing to Bhutan’s development needs and serving in prestigious positions, the tracer study would validate it.
The Royal Civil Service Commission’s (RCSC) data, collected since the early 2000s, indicate that 795 scholars have completed their studies, while 252 are undergoing various programs in Australian universities.
Of the total, 125 are AusAID scholars, 14 Australian Leadership Awards (ALA) scholars, 20 endeavour awards scholars and 888 are funded by the Bhutanese government.
The labour ministry’s data since 2007, after it was given the mandate to manage the scholarships for the corporate and private sector, shows 27 scholars having undergone or undergoing various programs in Australia.
Eight more corporate and private sector candidates have received the award for 2012 through the labour ministry, while seven received the awards through online applications. A human resource officer said these figures were not indicative of the exact number of candidates receiving awards since some applied on their own through the Internet.
AusAID official said that the Australian government’s aid program is expected to increase substantially by 2015.
Source: kuenselonline