Government Scholarships for a Degree Abroad: Bolashak, El-Yurt Umidi, MEXT and 16 Other Programmes

Almost every scholarship list for international students covers what a university gives you. There is a second source of money that those lists skip: the government.

Two governments can pay for your degree. Your own, to send you abroad and bring you back. Or the government of the country you want to study in, to bring you there in the first place. The two work on opposite logic, they open at different times, and the second kind is far more likely to fund a bachelor's degree.

Seven governments that fund their own citizens to study abroad

Four things are true of almost all of them, and they are the things students find out too late.

The admission offer comes first, and a ranking usually decides which offers count. Uzbekistan's El-Yurt Umidi funds study at a university in the QS or THE global top 300. India's National Overseas Scholarship selects candidates holding an offer from a QS top 500 university in its first round. Pakistan's HEC places scholars at universities in the QS or THE top 200. Kazakhstan's Bolashak uses its own approved list, reset each year by a republican commission. You apply to the university first and the government decides afterwards.

The numbers are smaller than the publicity suggests. Kazakhstan allocated 635 places for 2026, split into 20 for bachelor's study, 400 for master's, 50 for doctoral and 165 for professional internships. India awards 125 a year: 115 to Scheduled Castes, 6 to Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes, and 4 to landless agricultural labourers and traditional artisans, with 30% of the total earmarked for women. Mongolia's President's Scholar 2100 takes one student from each of the country's 330 soums and the 171 khoroos of Ulaanbaatar, who spend a preparatory year at the National University of Mongolia or the Mongolian University of Science and Technology before they leave. A government announcement in August 2024 put 516 students on the programme across 17 countries, and does not state what the award covers.

The windows are short and they do not share a calendar. Bolashak's 2026 round runs to 16 October 2026. Singapore's PSC Scholarship closes on 15 March 2027 for the 2027 intake. Pakistan's Phase III Batch IV closed on 28 August 2026. Uzbekistan announces rounds on no fixed date at all, publishing each one at least a week before it opens, with about a month to get documents in, so the site is worth watching rather than diarising.

Taking one often rules out the others. El-Yurt Umidi will not fund you if another programme already covers your costs in full, and names Chevening, Fulbright, Erasmus Mundus, DAAD, KOICA and JICE directly. Its scholars are also barred from paid work alongside their studies. India excludes anyone who has already studied abroad, whether on other funding or their own money. Pakistan requires a former HEC scholar to spend two years back in Pakistan before taking another HEC award.

Singapore is the outlier worth noting, because it funds school leavers more directly than the rest. Citizens apply on A-levels, the IB, a NUS High School Diploma or a polytechnic diploma with merit, and the award pays tuition and other approved charges, return airfare for an overseas degree, a maintenance allowance, and a master's degree later if the requirements are met.

Students do win these. A teacher from Uzbekistan funded a master's at the University of Reading through El-Yurt Umidi and confirms the top 300 rule from the applicant's side, and a Kazakhstani student won Bolashak for a master's at Imperial College London, which is what made the UK affordable.

Which of these programmes will fund a bachelor's degree

The first thing to check is whether the programme will fund the degree you are applying for, because several of the largest ones will not touch a bachelor's.

India's National Overseas Scholarship says it in one line: "Bachelors Level courses in any discipline are not covered under the Scheme." Pakistan's HEC Overseas scholarship is MS, MPhil and PhD. Indonesia's LPDP starts at master's.

India's award is worth reaching for if you qualify, since it pays tuition as charged, a maintenance allowance of $15,400 a year for the United States and most countries or £9,900 for the United Kingdom, a contingency allowance, visa fees, medical insurance and air passage. It starts at master's level, and the family income ceiling is 8 lakh rupees.

Kazakhstan's bachelor's route is the narrowest of all. Twenty of the 635 Bolashak places for 2026 are for bachelor's study, and they are reserved for students who placed first, second or third in an approved international olympiad, science project competition or performers' competition in the last three years, in a subject matching the specialty they apply for.

That leaves a seventeen-year-old with three of the seven: Uzbekistan, Singapore and Mongolia fund a first degree outright, and Kazakhstan funds twenty of them a year for olympiad medallists. Everyone else is applying four years early.

The years of work you owe when the degree ends

A government scholarship is a contract. The sum it pays is matched by a period of work it expects, and the period is usually longer than the degree.

Singapore counts Australia, Canada and New Zealand as English-speaking for this purpose, and the bond falls to four years for a degree taken in Singapore.

The obligation reaches further into the degree than most students expect. One Kazakhstani student whose Columbia language programme was funded by Bolashak found that the contract required studying the subject declared in the original scholarship application, which shaped the universities and courses that stayed open afterwards.

It is also a reason students turn these programmes down. A student who compared Bolashak with Erasmus Mundus chose Erasmus because it carries no requirement to return home or repay, and another guide to funding a master's in the US lists the absence of that obligation as the reason to prefer a university assistantship over Fulbright or Bolashak.

Neither is the wrong answer. A funded degree with five years of work attached is still a funded degree, and for most students it is the only one on offer. The decision is easier to make before you sign than after.

Twelve government programmes that fund students from abroad

The other direction is where a bachelor's degree gets funded, and it is open to far more people. These are the twelve government programmes in the Borderless scholarships directory.

Eight of those twelve will fund study below master's level, and four of them will fund a complete bachelor's degree: Japan, South Korea, Türkiye and Hungary. That is the answer for a school leaver whose own government starts at master's.

Two deadlines are close. The Chevening round closes on 6 October 2026. The Global Korea Scholarship undergraduate embassy track closed on 30 September 2026, so the next one to watch there is the university track, which runs on each designated university's own schedule.

Students take all four of the bachelor's routes. A student from Kazakhstan went to South Korea on the Global Korea Scholarship, and another from Almaty reached Seoul National University after weighing the GKS country quotas against applying to universities directly. Aidana chose ELTE in Hungary on Stipendium Hungaricum, which she describes as almost fully covering tuition with support for living costs. One student applied for MEXT through a university's joint office rather than through an embassy, which is the route most guides leave out. And the Japanese high school programme runs for students aged 15 to 18, which a student from India took before university applications began.

How to find the programme your own government runs

Search for your education ministry's name together with the words for study abroad in your own language, and look for a .gov domain. The programmes are often named after a person or an idea rather than described plainly, which is why they are hard to find: Bolashak means "future", El-Yurt Umidi means "hope of the homeland".

Then read four things on the official page before anything else. Which degree levels it funds. Whether it requires an offer from a specific list of universities, and which ranking defines that list. What the service obligation is in years. And when the window opens, because several of these run on no fixed annual date.

Expect some of them to tell you very little. Ghana's Scholarships Authority awards foreign scholarships through scholarships.gov.gh and publishes only that some are fully funded and some partial. Egypt's missions scheme through the Ministry of Higher Education is aimed largely at university staff rather than school leavers. Where a government publishes no figures, treat the programme as one to ask about directly rather than one to plan around.

Our scholarships directory holds all twelve of the programmes above with their current deadlines and official sources, alongside awards from individual universities.

Start your own journey

Check your own government first, because it is the one source of funding that no scholarship list will tell you about and no university will mention. Then check the governments of the countries you want to study in, because that is where a bachelor's degree is most likely to be paid for.

Read the service obligation before you apply rather than after you are selected. Five years is a long time to discover in a contract.

Kai, the Borderless AI college counselor, knows which programmes your nationality qualifies for, which deadlines are open now, and which universities appear on each programme's approved list. It's free to use.

Start with Kai, and read the stories from students who went abroad on their own government's money and on somebody else's.