Scholarships: A Trap?

It is scholarship season and students who have done well in their high school exams would be understandably excited and nervous as well. It should be a moment of celebration for those who have worked hard and scored marks worthy of a scholarship. What is disturbing is the fact that the scholarship process is too straight forward and a very quick one at that. Over the course of one-two days the entire gamut of scholarships are awarded. The students who have just passed out of the high school system are all teenagers with most of them not sure what they want to do in the future. If they score good marks in biology, they opt for the medical scholarships. Physics, commerce, English marks all translate in to engineering, administration and journalism scholarships etc.

The RGoB requires that the students getting the scholarships have to sign bonds with the RCSC wherein upon the completion of the studies, the students will come back and work for the RGoB. This trend is particularly prevalent in the Education scholarships. The students who opt for this set of scholarships have to come back and become teachers. Not much thought is given by the students to the contract because the lure of a scholarship in USA, Canada and Australia overwhelms an impressionable young mind.

Only upon gaining experience and exposure during their study do the students become more concerned with their future. What if they don’t want to become teachers? What if they don’t want to work for the government? What if they want to start their own business back home? What if they want to work abroad?

I know of some of my batch mates who have availed these scholarships and have failed to return back home in time. They refuse to come back to the country and are working in foreign lands. From those who have returned, there are some who have refused to report back to the RCSC who is the scholarship dealing agency of the government. Some have appeared for the civil service examinations but have deliberately failed in it so as to escape the RCSC’s clutches. All they need to do is score below 50% in the exam so as to render them unemployable in the civil service. This loophole has been exploited but the RCSC has not done anything to address this issue.

There are scholarship students like me who have returned home, reported to the RCSC, appeared and have done well in the civil service examinations and now teaching or working in other sectors and serving the country. We have honored the contracts that we have signed with no rewards while some of our friends are making good money away from home. Good for them but where is the justice? Is the RCSC just a paper tiger? Where is their efficiency when they cannot even track a few students and their whereabouts? Why can’t they hold the guarantors and the guardians responsible for the students not honoring their contracts? Why are they not penalized and punished?

We were made to sign the scholarship contracts as soon as we were ushered out of the interview chambers. There was no one to give us legal counseling. We were just 17 year old kids out of high school. We were not told about what we were getting in to with the RCSC. How would teenagers know that their attitude and preferences would change over their period of study?

I hope that the current batch of students who get these scholarships think twice before they pen down a deal with the RCSC. Free education is fine and nothing is more gratifying than serving the Tsa Wa Sum but what if you want to do it in your own way? What if the routine 9AM to 5PM desk job in a governmental department does not appeal to you after the completion of your study? It equally becomes the responsibility of the RCSC to ensure that the students they are investing in are made to understand the pros and cons of the system as much as it is of the student to be informed about their decision. It should also be high on the RCSC’s priority to ensure that the scholarship process is not abused.