RHODES SCHOLARS

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 21, 26 January 1938, Page 10

RHODES SCHOLARS

THE AMERICAN ANGLE

NOT ACCORDING TO PLAN

(From "The I'ostV Representative.)

NEW YORK, January 5.

The announcement that a .son of a ivhodes" scholar has just achieved the same distinction reopens the perennial discussion: where do Rhodes Scholars go? Invariably we "get the same answer: not where Cecil Rhodes in tended them to go. Only G per cent, of the largest unit, the American group, enter the service of their country. To date, none have entered the diplomatic service.

During the first twenty-five years of the trust, until 1929, the total number chosen was: United States, 2500; British Empire, 1500.

The preponderance of American Rhodes scholars was due to the terms of the will of the Empire Builder, which provided for the selection, each year, of two students from each State and territory of the Union—an aggregate of 96 from Continental America, and four from Alaska and Hawaii.

Commentators have wondered at this fact; it has come to be believed, generally, that, when Rhodes conceived his plan, he imagined America still comprised the thirteen original States. In 1919, the selection was placed in the hands of a committee of Rhodes Scholars. In 1929, the whole structure of selection was demolished, to remove the anomaly *of populous States, such as New York and Pennsylvania, with multiple centres of learnir.g, having the same, number of scholars as sparsely-populated frontier States, such as Nevada or New Mexico. The total number of scholars was reduced from 100 to 32; the Union was divided, for selection, into eight zones of six States each, four students being chosen from each zone. EDUCATION, LAW, AND COMMERCE. Forty per cent, of the American Rhodes Scholars, on leaving Oxford, adopt education as a profession. Law absorbs 20 per cent.; commerce, 15 per cent.; Civil Service, 6 per cent.; with journalism, medicine, and the Church following in that order. The result is directly opposed to the wishes expressed in life, by Cecil Rhodes. "The college authorities live secluded from the world, and so are like children," he once observed. That his bequest, the most famous in history, apart, perhaps, from the Carnegie Endowment and the Rockefeller Foundation, should have resulted in training professors and teachers is a grim commentary on the contempt always felt for them. Fourteen of his scholars are presidents of universities and colleges! Viewed from the angle of American life and conditions, the trust has been a failure. The hope of the founder has been realised in only two or three Americans in the Consular Service, one being Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs in the Department of State at Washington. It is a failure from the first year, when the American Rhodes Scholar finds so much difference in the curriculum at Oxford, its lp.ck of personal freedom, compared with his own campus, the change in food, housing, and national sports. Those who have been interviewed, m the years subsequent to their return, can suggest only one constructive result for the expenditure on them of 16 000 000 dollars to date; it has brought about a slightly better understanding between Americans and Britishers. ___________-