RHODES SCHOLARS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22956, 7 February 1938, Page 6

RHODES SCHOLARS

FUTUEE PROFESSIONS

STATISTICS IN AMERICA f FOUNDER'S HOPES UNREALISED ■ [from our own correspondent] NEW YORK, Jan. £fj The announcement that a son of a Rhodes 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 intended them to go. Only 6 per cent of the largest unit, the American group, enter the service of their country. To date, none have entered the diplomatic service. : r'i

During the first 25 years of the trust, until 1929, the total number .chosen was: —United States, 2500; British Empire, 1500. ; || The preponderance of Rhodes Scholars was clue 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, anfl four from Alaska and Hawaii. American Changes '-I4| Commentators have wondered at thii fact, and it has come to be believed, generally, that, when Rhodes conceived his plan, he imagined America still comprised the 13 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 States, such as New York and Pennsylvania, with multiple centres of learning, having the same number of scholars as sparselypopulated frontier States, such as Nevada or New Mexico. The total number of scholars; was reduced from 100 to 32, and the Union was divided, for selection, into eight zones of six State* each, four students being chosen from each zone.

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,"i 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 he always felt for them.Fourteen of his scholars are presidents j of universities and colleges! Failure of Trust Viewed from the angle of Americau 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 consulaF,service, one being chief of the division of Far Eastern Affairjs 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 lack of personal freedom, compared with his own campus, the change itt food, housing, and national sports. Those who have been interviewed, in 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 betiyeen Americans and' Britishers.