What could they gain from this kind of scam?

There used to be a scam running among my classmates several months ago. There would be a person calling us using the numbers we provided to the school’s database. They would tell us that they were a staff member of some kind of international education institute, and they were working with my college to provide us a special scholarship to study in a certain country. All they needed was our email so that they could send us more information. From the conversation I had with that person, I could tell that they knew a lot of my basic information in the school’s database. I knew it was a scam because: 1. I asked for where to look for further information and they beat around the bush, then told me to give them my email. 2. I asked for confirmation from the principle and he said the school didn’t know such thing existed. And 3. A friend of mine gave them her email and has received nothing in her inbox since.

I find it a bit strange for a scam. Our emails are also in the school’s database. If they were to steal our personal information, why didn’t they steal our emails as well? And suppose someone bought into the scam and did what they told, what would they do with the email? A lot of my classmates actually bought into the scam and we haven’t seen anything from them since. What did they do with the emails if they didn’t use them to spam us?