Iron Cages; Liquid Scholars
Exploring the valuable coordination of higher education scholarships in the international knowledge society
Time: Fri 2025-11-28 14.00
Location: Kollegiesalen, Brinellvägen 8, Stockholm
Video link: https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/68859811566
Language: English
Subject area: Technology and Learning
Doctoral student: Kieve Stone Saling , Lärande i Stem, Higher Education Organization Studies (HEOS)
Opponent: Professor Jeroen Huisman, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
Supervisor: Professor Lars Geschwind, Lärande i Stem; Senior lecturer Rebecca Ye, Stockholms universitet; Associate professor Kristina Edström, Lärande i Stem
Abstract
This thesis broadens prevailing understandings of scholarships and their systematic use in international higher education, introducing a novel set of theoretical tools for examining such endeavors. Focusing on organizations in Mexico and Indonesia and the students they sponsored in Swedish master’s degree programs between 2013-20, the study explores valuation processes, coordination puzzles and ethical challenges around international student mobility (ISM) with development-focused aims towards the common good.
The study advances a core understanding of “scholarships” as a widespread tool for coordination in societies. It argues scholarship-driven ISM should be considered with a view to the tripartite and often formalized relationship between sponsored students, sponsors and destination universities. With this perspective, it employs tools from a neo-pragmatist movement in economic sociology known as the “economics and sociology of conventions”, thereby rendering visible an array of factors which nuance, buttress or weigh upon these programs in their socially situated contexts. This allows the study to explore contestation, tensions and situations of stability or crisis involving “scholarships” in the societies which deploy and underwrite such structures.
Further and overarchingly, the study contemplates global factors influencing patterns of and rationales for sponsored ISM. Critically exploring the matrix between the international and national levels and the way such interactions impinge on varying domestic situations involving “scholarships”, the study highlights incoherence related to the programs’ dominant use of human capital theory-based justifications. Findings show the theory’s unfulfilled promises of commensurability have led to unsettled liabilities for these programs.
Detailed findings suggest programs may fare better if they deliberatively adapt through situations of domestic contestation and provide coherent proof of the valuable contributions of alumni towards a common good. However, the study also highlights present challenges with instrumental national aims for ISM amidst patterns of globalization and transnationalism. These relate to alumni non-return, instances of “frustrated return” and ethical challenges inferred from state attempts to positively ensure the return home of awardees whose valuation of their education differs from that of their state sponsors.