Implementation Guide : Scholarships and Grants | DSEP WG Working Draft

[ravi-prakash-v]

Document Details

Supported Protocol Version

This recommendation is for the protocol version 1.x which is due to be released shortly. The release updates can be tracked on release-1.x-review branch of the core specification repository.

This version

TODO

Latest published version

TODO

Latest editor's draft

Implementation report

Stress Test report

Editors

Ravi Prakash (Beckn Foundation)

Authors

Ravi Prakash (Beckn Foundation)

Feedback

Issues

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Discussions

#37

Errata

No Errata exists as of now

Context

TODO: Add some literature on the concept of scholarships and grants - purpose, scenarios, actors involved.

The Decentralized Skilling and Education Protocol is an adaptation of beckn protocol for the domain of education and skilling. Under this domain, there are four categories of use cases that are supported.

1. Jobs, Internships and Volunteering
2. Mentoring and Coaching
3. Trainings and Courses
4. Scholarships and Grants

The scope of this document is limited to the Scholarships and Grants category of use cases.

Problem

How does application to scholarships and grants happen via DSEP?

Solution

The following table contains the use cases under scholarships and grants category crowd-sourced by the members of the DSEP working group.

DSEP_UC_28	A DSEP Implementation must help a Govt/ CSR/ NGO/ Individual to be able to Execute a scenario where Govt/ CSR/ NGO/ Individual provides scholarship to individual based on specified criteria so that they can Provide scholarship for a specific use case
DSEP_UC_46	A DSEP Implementation must help a Students who who are looking for financial aid/support for pursuing education to be able to are able to discover stipends, scholarship in various universities so that they can so that they can get access to subsidized education

Click here to view all the responses

The following list describe the various use cases involved in scholarships after analyzing the submissions

1. A student applying for admission to a specific educational institution should be able to avail subsidized education by submitting their credentials
2. An educational institution scholarship provider should be able to list the scholarships available under specific eligibility criteria

Discovery of Scholarships

Some of the typical parameters set when searching for scholarships are

1. Scholarship details
   1. Name of Scholarship or Grant
   2. Amount offered
   3. Name of the Institution
   4. Scholarship provider
2. Scholarship categories like
   5. Class / Grade applied for / pursued
   6. Degree applied for / pursued
   7. Course applied for / pursued
   8. University
   9. Board
3. Applicant’s profile
   10. Gender
   11. Applicant’s caste
   12. Age
   13. Financial status
4. Location details
   14. Country of scholarship offering
   15. State of scholarship offering
   16. District of scholarship offering

Taxonomy Mapping

The above parameters must be mapped to specific core schema and their attributes. This mapping will be released as part of the DSEP Specification version 0.9.x.

Attributes that are already present in the core schema

Parameter	Schema	Path
Gender	Person	#.Person.gender
Age	Person	#.Person.age
Country	Country	#.Country
State	Location	#.Location.state
District	Location	#.Location.district

# = root

Attributes that are not present in core but are common to all DSEP use case categories, not just for Scholarships.

1. Class / Grade
2. Degree
3. Course
4. University
5. Board
6. Caste

Out of the above, Class/Grade, Degree, Course, University, and Board seem to be educational qualifications that a person can have. Support for this can be achieved using the following method.

The tags that can be supported for a Person schema are shown below in this table

Tag Group: Educational Qualification

Name	Code (key)	Type	Description	Examples	Recommended Standard / Format
Grade	grade	string	Grade completed in school	1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12	TODO
Degree	degree	string	The degree of qualification offered by an academic institution	M.Tech, Ph.D, M.B.B.S	TODO
Course	course	string	The course for which the degree applies for	computer_science, psychology_hons	TODO
University	university	string	The name of the university that has offered the academic degree	Streeling University	TODO
Board	board	string	The board that a school is affiliated with	Central Board of Secondary Education	TODO
School	school	string	The grade school the person graduated from	Mount Carmel School	TODO
Graduation Certificate	grad_cert	string	The graduation certificate issued by the institution the person graduated from	https://mcs.ac.in/student/cert/xyz.json	URL to verificable graduation certificate

Tag Group: Financial Status

Name	Code (key)	Type	Description	Examples	Recommended Standard
Family Income	family_income	string	Family income per annum	360000 INR	TODO
Income Certificate	income_cert	string	Income certificate		URL to verifiable income certificate

The values of the above coded keys may be standardized as per global or regional standards wherever applicable. If standards for a specific attribute do not exist, then the DSEP Working Group must create a standard for the same.

A run-time example of Person schema with the all the specified Tags and Tag groups is shown below

{
   "name" : "Jane Doe",
   "age" : 36,
   "gender" : "Female",
   "tags" : [
       {
           "code" : "academic_qualifications",
           "name" : "Academic Qualifications",
           "list" : [
               {
                   "code" : "degree",
                   "name" : "Degree",
                   "value" : "m_tech"
               },
               {
                   "code" : "course",
                   "name" : "Course",
                   "value" : "csc"
               },
               {
                   "code" : "university",
                   "name" : "University",
                   "value" : "Stanford University"
               },
               {
                   "code" : "grad_cert",
                   "name" : "Graduation Certificate",
                   "value" : "https://example.com/path/to/certificate"
               }
           ]
       },
       {
           "code" : "academic_qualifications",
           "name" : "Academic Qualifications",
           "list" : [
               {
                   "code" : "degree",
                   "name" : "Degree",
                   "value" : "B.Tech"
               },
               {
                   "code" : "course",
                   "name" : "Course",
                   "value" : "ei"
               },
               {
                   "code" : "university",
                   "name" : "University",
                   "value" : "BITS Pilani"
               },
               {
                   "code" : "grad_cert",
                   "name" : "Graduation Certificate",
                   "value" : "https://example.com/path/to/certificate"
               }
           ]
       },
       {
           "code" : "academic_qualifications",
           "name" : "Academic Qualifications",
           "list" : [
               {
                   "code" : "grade",
                   "name" : "Grade",
                   "value" : "12"
               },
               {
                   "code" : "board",
                   "name" : "Board",
                   "value" : "cbse"
               },
               {
                   "code" : "grad_cert",
                   "name" : "Graduation Certificate",
                   "value" : "https://example.com/path/to/certificate"
               }
           ]
       },
       {
           "code" : "fin_status",
           "name" : "Financial Status",
           "list" : [
               {
                   "code" : "family_income",
                   "name" : "Family Income",
                   "value" : "1100000 INR"
               },
               {
                   "code" : "income_cert",
                   "name" : "Income Certificate",
                   "value" : "https://example.com/path/to/certificate"
               }
           ]
       }
   ]
}

The fields that are set depend upon the context where this object is used.

Concrete Examples

Let us now look at some concrete examples

Example 1 : Search for scholarships for Indian female students with a family income less than or equal to 200000 INR per annum

“Annual income” and “Female” are typically attributes of the person availing the scholarship.

{
   "context" : {
       "domain" : "dsep:scholarships",
       "country" : "IND",
       "city" : "*",
       ...
   },
   "message" : {
       "fulfillment" : {
           "customer" : {
               "age" : 36,
               "gender" : "Female",
               "tags" : [
                   {
                       "code" : "fin_status",
                       "list" : [
                           {
                               "code" : "family_income",
                               "value" : "2000000 INR"
                           }
                       ]
                   }
               ]
           }
       }
   }
}

Example 2: Search for Scholarships & Grants for "Undergraduate students”.

“Undergraduate” can be considered a category of academic degrees. DSEP should specify standard category codes [TODO].

{
   "context" : {
       "domain" : "dsep:scholarships",
       "country" : "IND",
       "city" : "*",
       ...


   },
   "message" : {
       "category" : {
           "descriptor" : {
               "code" : "ug"
           }
       }
   }
}

Example 3: A scholarship provider platform wants to publish a list of scholarships with specific eligibility criteria

[TODO]