The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. State Department has launched a survey of the Tibetan Scholarship Programme better known as the Tibetan Fulbright Scholarship. First of its kind since the Tibetan Scholarship Programme was launched in 1987, the survey aims to ‘assess the impact of the programme in terms of outcomes related to the administration of a self governing modern community, to assess the extent to which the programme is meeting the legislative goal of fostering mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries’ says a letter sent to the respondents by the surveyors.
Stanford Research Institute, a non-profit research organisation in the United States, is conducting the survey. The survey is crucial to the ongoing effort of the U.S. State Department and the larger community of scholars to assess its programmes in terms of their long tern value and contributions to mutual understanding and international educational and cultural cooperation.
The Tibetan Scholarship Programme gives opportunity to 15 students each year to study in the United States. But it was not free from controversies as the Department of Education in Dharamsala was once challenged by a grantee in the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission (equivalent of the highest legal body). However, the Education Department was letter given a clean chit by the court.
Former grantees willing to participate in the survey may do so by sending email to Julie Kautz at kautz@wdc.sri.com In the email, the grantees must include their full name and the year they started study in the US.
A substantial number of Tibetan students have been opportuned to study in the ‘promised land’ but a very few have returned to serve the exile community back home in India.
The findings of this survey will decide the fate of future aspirants of this scholarship programme. The surveyors have assured the respondents, all of whom are former grantees under the programme, of total confidentiality. Even the Department of Education, Dharamsala and Tibet Fund, New York, will not have access to the raw data of this survey, says Theodore Kniker of Office of Policy and Evaluation, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. State Department.
