SCHOLARSHIPS AT SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES. (To THZ EDITOR OF THE
"SPECTATOR-1 Era,—It is to be hoped that the 'influential Committee of Tutors" which (as your correspondent Mr. Merchant in last week's Spectator tells us) is at present engaged in investigating the perplexing question whether or no it is desirable to award College scholarships without an inquiry into the financial needs of the recipients will complete its researches soon, and make them public when they are completed. It is a matter of common knowledge among men who have been to the older Universities that the method of granting scholarships which is at present followed is unfortunately and unneces- sarily wasteful. But the severest critics of the system would not have ventured to suggest that its extravagance was so glaring as is implied by Mr. Marchaut when he states that of the scholars at his own College about two in five could have obtained a University education at Oxford or Cambridge without the financial assistance which was given them. It is difficult to believe that the majority of College authorities have had an experience similar to that of Mr. 3farchant, or that they would have continued for so long to spend £80 a 'year on giving prizes to successful schoolboys, were it the case that their action resulted in several thousand pounds being annually spent in this fashion. But even if Mr. 3farchant has overestimated the evil to the extent of doubling it—if only one in five, instead of two in five, of the scholars have no need of their scholarship money—the waste is far too serious to be lightly overlooked, for it would still be true that twenty per cent, of the money spent on scholarships is spent in a manner which is of very doubtful value. Twenty per cent. of 220,000 (the sum annually expended without inquiry in College scholarships at Oxford alone) is 26,000; 26,000 awarded every year to men 'who do not need help, while men who do need help are every year turned away. Comment upon such a system is super- fluous. One can imagine the public outcry were it maintained by (say) the London County Council. But the whole subject *of University and College emoluments demands strict inquiry. Unfortunately, those who know how slowly the wheels of Academic machinery move when left to themselves will 'have little confidence that any reasonable reformation will be brought about until the public pleads its own cause, and the cause, as I think, of national culture. There is no greater service which the Spectator could render the country than to open its eyes to the vast potentialities of usefulness contained —one is tempted to say buried—in our older Universities.—
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