CO885-(7-8) — Page 129

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REPORT OF A COMMITTEE

APPOINTED TO CONSIDER

Questions relating to the Position of Students Holding Scholarships in the United Kingdom granted by Colonial Governments.

23

The Committee have found the task of making general recommendations as to the treatment of Colonial students holding scholarships in the United Kingdom one of considerable difficulty owing to two special causes.

(a.) The multiplicity of maces represented by the students.

(b.) The variety of institutions at which it has been the practice to allow

them to pursue their studies.

Of the students now or recently holding scholarships (the average number at one time being 40), some are of pure white descent, others of African or mixed descent, while the Eastern Colonies send burghers, Singalese, Malays, and Chinese; and while the majority of the students seem to select Edinburgh University as their place of study, various colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, and technical institutions, such as Cooper's Hill College and the Crystal Palace School of Engineering, have also been resorted to.

It is obvious that the want of homogeneity of race and habits among the students, and the wide dispersion of their places of study, increase the difficulty of making any general rules for their guidance, and especially of exercising any supervision over them. Some of the students are by race and education as competent to manage their own affairs as the average English undergraduate and might resent a control, disciplinary or financial, which would be beneficial and not irksome to others of a less independent character.

Again, some of the institutions are residential and maintain over their students a measure of discipline which could, without much difficulty, be increased to meet the needs of Colonial scholars, while others are merely teaching or examining bodies where any supervision required by the students must be supplied at extru.

It is probably inexpedient to prescribe for the scholar the course he is to follow or the institution at which he is to study.

The Committee have appended a short statement of the curriculum at institutions, other than Oxford and Cambridge, to which scholars have proceeded.

With this preface the Committee beg to submit the following to the Secretary of State :~

I. It is desirable that, either by contribution from relatives or by Government Grant, sufficient means should be assured to the student (before he leaves the Colony) to enable him to complete the course of education proposed for him.

II. If it be desired in any case that the scholar should pass his time in a residential University, the Committee think that, besides the cost of a passage out and home, the value of the scholarship should be £250 for four or five years, according to the normal duration of the course of study which the scholar undertakes.

4782-50—1/1900 Wt 26520 D & S−5 (B)

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

Reference :-

LICO.885

7

RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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