When we talk about scholarships, we often talk about opportunity — about the chance to study, to rise, to cross the invisible barriers that hold talent hostage to circumstance. What we talk about less often is the human scaffolding that allows those opportunities to hold steady: mentorship.
In the vocabulary of education, “scholarship” has long meant financial support — a cheque, a stipend, a seat at the table. But in the lived experience of the thousands of young people who win these awards each year, the money is often just the beginning. What sustains ambition, particularly for first-generation learners, is guidance. Mentorship, in this sense, is not an accessory to scholarship; it is its moral core.
The Invisible Curriculum
Every scholarship programme, no matter how generous, sits atop an invisible divide between those who know how to navigate elite systems and those who must learn it from scratch. For a student from a remote village in Bihar or a fishing community in Kerala, winning a scholarship to a top university can feel like landing on another planet. The classrooms are larger, the language more abstract, the expectations unspoken.
Mentorship steps into that silence. It translates the hidden curriculum — the unspoken norms, confidence cues, and institutional rhythms that privilege the already privileged. A mentor tells a student not just how to write a dissertation but how to read between the lines of an email, how to network without self-doubt, how to seek help without shame.
In that sense, mentorship is not about academic coaching. It’s about cultural decoding. It gives young scholars, particularly those from marginalised backgrounds, the tools to navigate systems designed for others.
The Numbers Behind the Nudge
Globally, the data on mentorship is as compelling as any financial argument. A 2023 study by the World Bank and the Mastercard Foundation found that students paired with structured mentorship programmes were 40% more likely to complete higher education and 70% more likely to pursue leadership roles in their sectors.
In India, a survey by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) found that scholarship recipients with sustained mentor contact reported higher self-efficacy and lower dropout rates, even when compared to peers receiving larger financial grants. The same study noted that the greatest gains were among women, first-generation learners and students from rural or low-income backgrounds, precisely those who often face social isolation in higher education.
While financial aid solves one layer of inequity which is access and mentorship solves another: belonging.
Money Opens Doors, Mentorship Keeps Them Open
The logic is straightforward. Money may get you into the room; mentorship teaches you how to stay there. It helps bridge the transition between aspiration and achievement.
While the grant itself is prestigious, past scholars often emphasise that it was the mentorship — formal and informal — that transformed their journeys. Alumni who had once navigated similar struggles became mentors, guiding younger cohorts through not just academic choices but emotional resilience. “Knowing there was someone who understood where I came from changed everything,” says one recipient. “It made me feel less like an imposter.”
The same pattern is visible in international programmes. The Chevening Scholarship, funded by the UK government, pairs its scholars with professional mentors from their fields. The Fulbright network in the United States goes further, cultivating a lifelong alumni mentorship model that keeps scholars connected long after graduation. Even the Gates Cambridge and Rhodes Trust have recently expanded mentoring support to help scholars adapt socially and emotionally to demanding environments.
Each of these programmes has recognised that the transformative impact of a scholarship is not measured solely by degrees or publications, but by how confidently a scholar can navigate the world beyond the classroom.
A Human Infrastructure for Equity
To see the value of mentorship, one only has to step into the shoes of a first-generation scholar. Imagine being admitted to a top university abroad where the reading lists are foreign, the seminars intimidating and the social circles self-assured. In that moment, financial aid can pay tuition, but it cannot buy confidence.
Mentorship provides that bridge. It offers psychological safety — the assurance that you are not alone in your confusion or doubt. It anchors the intangible: self-belief, professional identity, the courage to fail and begin again.
In the absence of such support, many gifted students falter not for lack of intellect, but for lack of navigation. A report by India’s Ministry of Education in 2022 noted that nearly one in five students from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in elite universities felt socially alienated despite academic competence. Most cited lack of guidance or relatable mentors as a key factor.
The tragedy of talent loss lies not in opportunity denied, but in opportunity unaccompanied.
Mentorship as Social Capital
Sociologists often describe mentorship as a form of social capital — the networked knowledge and emotional support that enable individuals to move confidently through institutions. Pierre Bourdieu, who coined the term, argued that inequality persists not only because of economic differences but because of disparities in social know-how: who you know, how you speak, when you ask, how you belong.
In that light, mentorship democratizes what privilege once monopolized. It gives access not just to information, but to interpretation. A mentor decodes the unwritten rules — when to publish, how to present, what to prioritize. In elite academic and professional spaces, such guidance can be the difference between thriving and merely surviving.
For women scholars, particularly in STEM and policy fields, mentorship often doubles as advocacy. A study by UNESCO found that women with active mentors were three times more likely to remain in research careers after graduation than those without. The mentor’s role, in these cases, is not only academic but structural — amplifying voices in spaces that have historically excluded them.
The Emotional Architecture of Success
If scholarships build opportunity, mentorship builds endurance. Every student’s journey includes moments of self-doubt: the first failed exam, the isolating winter abroad, the conference where everyone else seems more articulate. In those moments, mentorship is a lifeline.
Good mentors do more than guide; they listen. They normalise vulnerability in a system obsessed with achievement.
This emotional architecture of mentorship including empathy, reassurance and perspective is often what sustains long-term impact. Financial aid can change a year; mentorship can change a life trajectory.
Institutionalising Mentorship: From Ad Hoc to Embedded
Despite the evidence, many scholarship programmes still treat mentorship as optional — an informal relationship left to alumni goodwill. This is changing. Organisations are increasingly institutionalising mentorship frameworks that match scholars with professionals, alumni or peers based on discipline, geography or shared background.
The Inlaks Fellowship for Indian Journalists, for instance, pairs fellows with senior mentors who review work, offer editorial guidance and connect them to networks. The mentorship continues even after the fellowship ends, evolving into professional collaboration.
Globally, the Schmidt Science Fellows, Obama Foundation Scholars and Mandela Rhodes Foundation have embedded mentorship as a structural pillar. Their approach is systematic: orientation sessions, monthly check-ins, leadership retreats and evaluation mechanisms that treat mentorship not as charity but as pedagogy.
Such integration transforms mentorship from a benevolent gesture into an accountability framework — ensuring that scholarship programmes deliver not just opportunity, but continuity.
Mentorship and the Multipliers of Change
The impact of mentorship doesn’t end with the scholar. When mentees return home, they often become mentors themselves. This creates what sociologists call “social multipliers” — effects that ripple beyond individual benefit.
A first-generation scholar who returns to teach, for instance, carries back not just knowledge but a new model of guidance. They become living proof that mentorship begets leadership. In India, several former scholarship recipients now run grassroots mentorship circles for students from marginalised backgrounds. Their message is simple: someone once helped me; now I help others.
This multiplier effect is perhaps mentorship’s most enduring legacy. It converts personal advancement into collective progress. The Chevening and Commonwealth alumni networks, for example, now run peer-mentorship programmes across South Asia and Africa, mentoring younger applicants and offering moral and logistical support. In doing so, they keep the ladder open.
Barriers to Mentorship
Yet, even as the case for mentorship grows, practical barriers remain. Time is the most obvious one. Mentors are often overcommitted academics or professionals balancing multiple responsibilities. Institutions must therefore invest in systems that make mentorship feasible and rewarding through recognition, training or shared credit.
Another challenge lies in matching mentors and mentees effectively. Poorly matched pairs can lead to disengagement or worse, discouragement. Mentorship is not transactional; it relies on chemistry, shared trust and mutual respect.
Finally, there is the challenge of diversity. Too often, mentors reflect the same demographic patterns of privilege that scholarships seek to redress. Diversifying mentor pools by gender, geography and lived experience is key to creating authentic connection.
Digital Mentorship: Expanding the Reach
Technology is beginning to address some of these challenges. Digital mentorship platforms now allow scholars to connect with global networks beyond their institutions. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many scholarship programmes moved mentoring online and discovered unexpected benefits.
The UNDP Global Policy Network, for instance, piloted a virtual mentorship model that connected young researchers from developing countries with policy experts worldwide. Surveys found that 85% of participants continued their mentor relationships after the programme ended.
Similarly, India’s National Scholarship Portal is exploring AI-driven mentor matching to connect students with professionals across industries. Digital tools democratize mentorship by breaking the barriers of geography and access though they cannot replace the intimacy of human connection.
What Effective Mentorship Looks Like
Mentorship is not one-size-fits-all. Its impact depends on depth, continuity, and reciprocity. The most effective mentors share three traits: empathy, consistency, and empowerment.
Empathy builds trust — the foundation for honest dialogue. Consistency sustains growth — ensuring that guidance is not sporadic but iterative. Empowerment transforms the dynamic — mentors do not mould mentees into replicas of themselves; they help them find their own voice.
Successful mentorship programmes also include feedback loops, structured goal-setting and opportunities for peer learning. Mentorship, after all, is a two-way street. Mentors, too, often describe learning as much as they teach.
From Merit to Meaning
Ultimately, mentorship redefines what merit means in scholarship programmes. It moves us away from the myth of the self-made student toward a more collective understanding of success. No scholar, no matter how brilliant, thrives in isolation. Behind every award-winning thesis or social innovation stands a teacher, an advisor, a friend who believed before the world did.
By institutionalising mentorship, scholarship programmes affirm that intellect alone is not enough — that empathy, guidance and community are part of what makes education transformative.
In an age where inequality is both deep and diffuse, mentorship offers a rare antidote: a human relationship that cuts through structural barriers. It does not fix every inequity, but it equips individuals to navigate them with confidence and clarity.
The Multiplier of Hope
The true impact of mentorship cannot always be measured in metrics. It appears in subtler forms — in a student who finally asks a question in class, in a young researcher who applies for a fellowship they thought was beyond reach, in a scholar who returns home and builds something new.
Scholarship programmes may provide the wings, but mentorship teaches flight. It gives meaning to opportunity and turns privilege into possibility.
In the long arc of education, mentorship is not an add-on; it is the multiplier of hope. And as more institutions begin to recognise its power, the question is no longer whether mentorship belongs in scholarship programmes but how soon we can make it universal.
