Individual scholarships - Orange Knowledge Programme

Scholarships are offered for short courses and master's programmes at Dutch education institutions.

Benefits for your institution

The Orange Knowledge Programme gives you the opportunity to create an international classroom where students and staff can learn from each other. It also allows you to create sustainable professional partnerships with organisations in Orange Knowledge countries.

Expenses covered

As an education institution you get a fixed reimbursement, which includes visa, travel and insurance costs, study materials and a handling fee. It also includes 95% of tuition fees for each selected student. You cover the remaining 5% of the tuition fee yourself.

The end date for study programmes participating in the Orange Knowledge Programme is 31 August 2024. For master’s programmes that have a duration beyond 31 August 2024, expenses are covered for 1 academic year. Institutions must co-finance the remaining study period and hand in a signed declaration of co-finance before 19 September 2023.

Which institutions can participate?

Your organisation can participate if it:

• has signed the Code of Conduct international students, or is included in the list of additional knowledge centres;
• will deliver the course itself; intermediary organisations cannot participate;
• has sufficient organisational and financial means.

What are the course criteria?

The courses need to meet the following criteria:

• The duration of short courses should be between 12 and 365 days.
• The maximum duration for master’s programmes is 24 months.
• Master's programmes with a duration longer than 1 academic year can only participate with co-financing.
• The end date for implementation of short courses is 31 August 2024 and for Master’s is 31 January 2025, with the exception of co-financed master’s programmes.
• The course or programme should be full-time (this does not apply to e-learning courses).
• The course or programme needs to take place either in the Netherlands or needs to be carried out by a Dutch institution in an OKP country.
• The course or programme needs to be taught in English, French or Spanish.
• Master’s programmes need to be accredited.

In addition, the start date of the course or programme needs to be within a specified period; this varies per grant application round:

• Round 1 - for master's and short courses
  Courses should start between 24 July 2023 and 31 January 2024
• Round 2 – for master's and short courses
  Courses should start after 1 February 2024

All Short courses must be completed before 31 August 2024 and all Master’s must be completed by 31 January 2025, with the exception of co-financed master’s programmes.

Which candidates can you nominate?

The scholarships are open to professionals who are nationals of - and living and working in - the countries participating in the Orange Knowledge Programme.

You can find the number of candidates that you are allowed to nominate in Delta after you submit the first registration. The number of nominations is based on the following criteria:

• the available grant budget for the application round;
• the average cost of the scholarship;
• the number of scholarships that were awarded to an institution in previous application rounds.

What is your role in the scholarship programme?

As an education institution you apply for subsidy on behalf of individual candidates. After submitting the grant application in the form of one or multiple nominations, you are responsible for all communication and administration for the scholarship(s). This means that you need to provide students with all the information and relevant documents:

Documents for scholarships - Orange Knowledge

Also, you are responsible for distributing the application link to candidates (see "process step-by-step").

As an education institution you are the ‘grant recipient’. You are responsible for distributing the scholarship reimbursements to the selected individual scholarship holders. In case of co-financing, you are also responsible for offering a co-financed scholarship for the remaining part of the study period.

You can find all the details of your responsibilities in the grant conditions:

Grant obligations and conditions (Round 2 2023 - Version 10) (322.29 kB)
Grant obligations and conditions (Round 1 2023 - Version 9) (328.71 kB)

Information on Round 1

Are you a staff member of an implementing education institution? Find out more about the upcoming application round:

Round 1 information page for institutions

Round 2

• Course registration in Hovi (institutions): 15 May

• Course details check in Delta (institutions): 1 June - 27 June 16.00 CEST

• Applications (students): 28 June - 5 September 16.00 CEST

• Nomination of applicants (institutions): 19 September 16.00 CEST

• Eligibility check & assessment (embassies): 20 September – 19 October 16.00 CET

• Grant letters: 6 November 2023

Master's programmes and short courses must start after 1 February 2024. Due to the end date of the Orange Knowledge Programme, 31 August 2024 is to be adhered to as the end date for implementation of courses, except for co-financed master’s programmes.

Step 1

Check if the programme you want to offer meets the above criteria.

Step 2

Register the course in Hovi/Studiekeuze 123 before the date specified below under 'Deadlines'. Make sure you indicate that the course is open for OKP scholarship holders.

Step 3

Once you have received a notification email, check the course details in Delta through the link sent in the email. Update if necessary. See the Delta user manual for instructions:

Delta user manual for Dutch institutions (3.20 MB)

Step 4

Check your website to make sure you link to all our latest OKP documents for candidates. Also, promote the scholarship on your website.

Step 5

Once candidates have registered for the course at your institution, send your students a link to the application page in Delta, to apply for the scholarship. Candidates must meet the eligibility criteria of the scholarship programme. You can send them a link to our Study in Holland website for more information.

Step 6

Process all the applications following the instructions in the Delta manual above. Make sure you do this before the deadline, otherwise your students will not be considered for a scholarship.

Step 7

Nominate your candidates and submit the applications before the deadline. This constitutes the official subsidy request.

Step 8

The applications are sent to the Embassies for assessment. Each application is assessed by the Dutch Embassy based in the country the candidate works in. The Embassies will keep the priorities and focus areas for the Orange Knowledge Programme for their countries in mind while doing this assessment. This process takes about 3 to 4 weeks.

Assessment questions individual scholarships Orange Knowledge‌ (90.37 kB)

See the step-by-step guide for embassies and consulates

Delta User Manual for Embassies Individual Scholarships Orange Knowledge Programme (OKP) (1.55 MB)

Step 9

We will select the individual scholarship awardees, after the Embassies have finished their assessment. You will receive an official grant letter with an overview of selected and rejected candidate applications.

The OKP scholarships selection is done by an algorithm, based on the following principles:

Each country category, full programme (A) and compact (B) countries receives a certain percentage of the total available budget for that application round. Currently, 75% of the budget goes to full programme countries and 25% of the budget goes to compact countries.

We aim to have an even distribution of the number of scholarships over the countries within that region. Condition for this is that from each of the countries, enough qualifying applications are received. Qualifying means that:

• the application is assessed as eligible by the Embassy (application meets the OKP conditions), and
• is granted the minimum score or higher by the Embassy (the minimum score guarantees a certain quality among the eligible applications
• applicants that have previously been involved in an OKP Institutional Collaboration Project or Tailor-Made Training (+) will be considered extra favourably.

During the allocation of scholarships, the highest scoring application (per country) is first selected by the algorithm. For example, if country X has 2 eligible applications with 17 and 19 points each, the application with 19 points is selected first. However, if country X has two applications with 17 and 19 points and country Y has two applications with 15 and 16 points, country X’s application with 19 points is selected first and country Y’s application with 16 points is selected second, due to the aim to realise an even distribution of scholarships among all the countries belonging to a certain country category.

The selection algorithm continues allocating scholarships in this fashion, until the remaining budget is not sufficient anymore to finish a complete round of even distributions of scholarships over all countries in a certain category that still have non-selected, qualifying applications. The remaining budget is then distributed randomly over the remaining applications, selecting one – or several – among the highest qualifying applications (max. one per country) that are still available.

If necessary, a correction on policy theme is applied in order to strive for an even distribution amongst all four priority themes. This implies that if the selection is unevenly distributed, candidates from the underrepresented policy theme are awarded up to 3 extra points and the selection is re-run.

If necessary, a 'correction' on gender is manually applied to ensure that 50% of the selected scholarship candidates is female. This implies that if the 50% mark is not met after the first selection round, female candidates are awarded 1 extra point and the selection is re-run (the mechanism explained above still applies). If the 50% mark is then met, the selection is made final. If the 50% mark is not yet met, all female candidates are awarded 2 extra points and the selection is re-run, until the 50% mark is met.

When we implement our programme, we acknowledge our Code of Conduct. In our Code of Conduct we describe how we put our mission and values into practice every day. We explain the professional and ethical behaviour that is expected from all of us and those who handle OKP individual scholarships.

Read our Code of Conduct

We frequently send out updates to the programme's participants with important information, such as deadlines, calls and changes. To make sure that you are fully informed, please register to receive these updates.

Receive our programme updates

Granted Individual Scholarships - overview - Orange Knowledge Programme (154.64 kB)