The State Department is now quietly allowing dozens of young women and minority students to become full-fledged diplomats after threatening to rescind job offers that most of the students were given two years ago upon winning prestigious scholarships. The concession, issued without announcement on Thursday, came after an intense lobbying campaign by members of Congress and retired diplomats. They persuaded Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson to reverse his earlier decision to delay the students’ hiring into the Foreign Service indefinitely.

Bubner, from Victoria University in Melbourne, is one of more than 10,000 young Australian students in the past three years to win government sponsorship to study or take up a short internships across about 35 countries in Asia, under a program known as the New Colombo Plan. [...] The exchange program is a favourite of Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, the goal to connect the next generation with the growing economies of the neighbourhood.

Colleges in the U.S. are opening their doors — and their financial aid — to Syrian refugees. Over the past year, at least a dozen schools have promised to cover full or partial tuition for Syrian refugees who are accepted for enrollment. They join a coalition of more than 60 colleges that have started providing scholarships to Syrian students since the country’s civil war began in 2011.

The Indonesian government has awarded the Art and Cultural Scholarship to 70 participants from 40 countries to enhance people-to-people contact between Indonesia and the international community.

Market forces are working against college degrees in Marx, Lenin and Ho Chi Minh studies in Vietnam, where the Communist government has resorted to offering free tuition to attract students. Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung signed a decree last month giving free tuition to students agreeing to take four-year courses on Marxism-Leninism and the thoughts of Ho Chi Minh, the country's revolutionary hero, at state-run universities.