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Commonwealth Scholarship and Fellowship Scheme

I welcome the opportunity to add my voice to the chorus of those who seek to strengthen our academic ties with a group of countries of exceptional closeness to us and to maintain our competitiveness in the global academic market. Not only do we want to compete but our own academic institutions are greatly enriched by Commonwealth students and vice versa. I declare an interest—or, rather, an expertise—as a former trustee of the Rhodes scholarships, many of whose scholars are from the old or developed Commonwealth. In my youth, I was one of those who benefited from a graduate scholarship given to me by a university in the United States. Scholarships are not, in my view, a significant tool of foreign of policy, as they have been described; they are tools of academic and personal excellence. It was often joked that education at prestigious British universities did not seem to have had the expected beneficial effects on leaders of some countries in turmoil in the past in Africa and Asia. But the quality of the scholars from the developed Commonwealth is evident in the list of names that we have seen of those who have held scholarships in the past and in the contribution that they have made to the UK and to their own countries. International students have given us so much: they have invigorated our higher educational institutions and they have sparked off competition to attract them. International scholarships equate with prestige. Our international scholars have turned British universities into international institutions. Our overseas graduates are at the forefront of efforts in conservation, in law, in science, in politics and in business. Just by being here they represent international friendship and a lesson in fruitful diversity. In my view, there should be an overall review of the scholarships for graduate foreign students involving the universities, all the government departments with an interest and the Higher Education Funding Council. We must also keep scientific research programmes going. These are heavily reliant on international students, especially when so many British students are abandoning pure science at A-level and beyond. Australia, for example, has increased the number of its awards and is now seen as an excellent place for Asian students, in direct competition with us. Other students will, of course, go to the United States. Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College will make great efforts to find and fund graduate doctoral students and they have the muscle to do so. Other universities, if they do not get Commonwealth scholarships, will fall further behind in this competition. That will threaten the Government’s policy of driving up the quality of all our higher education institutions and making university education a norm for half of our school leavers, with a future beckoning beyond the BA. In my view, the Government should confirm their commitment to the Commonwealth. Let me put in a word for my own discipline, law. There are special ties with the developed Commonwealth countries through their legal systems. We share a system of common law and human rights that makes joint academic study especially appropriate. We know that there are vice-chancellors of distinguished universities in this country who have come through Commonwealth scholarships. We know of judges, former MPs, people of influence in the Wellcome Trust, which gives out funding to other universities, and—I am sure she will not mind being named—Germaine Greer, the iconic feminist who is well on her way to being a national treasure. I suggest that Commonwealth scholarships are a legacy that will outlast much more expensive expenditure, for example on the Olympics, for a tiny fraction of the price. To use the Government’s favourite word, Commonwealth scholarships are a genuine investment, the return on which we will see for decades to come.