World Education

In the fetid clouds arising from the dying and now dead carcass of the 79th Congress, the passage of a bill last week of the most profound importance to America and the rest of the world has been almost totally obscured from view. A bill which provides for approximately 314 million dollars' worth of international education over the next 20 years.

Sponsored by Senator Fulbright, former Rhodes Scholar and one-time president of the University of Arkansas, the bill calls for the setting aside of specific amounts of money received from the sale of American surplus war materials to foreign countries to be expended as scholarships for American students studying abroad. The maximum amount of money to be used will be one million dollars per country per year. Foreign countries, desperately in need of the million and one items from bulldozers to Quonset huts that are now gathering rust in American stockpiles overseas, and yet at the same time reluctant to part with their meagre reserve of American exchange with which to buy such equipment, have jumped at the chance to pay off their bills by financing a series of international scholarships for study within their own boundaries.

As projected now, funds will be used not only to enable American students to study abroad, but to establish fellowships and professorships in foreign schools to be filled by American teachers. The bill may even extend to the foundation of American colleges and schools abroad. Already a working agreement has been established with the British and in all likelihood the first of the surplus property scholarship students will go there.

Details have still to be worked out, but advance speculation places the value of the individual scholarship at 2,000 dollars. This would mean an annual award of 500 scholarships for 20 years to each of the six countries eligible for the maximum benefit of one million dollars a year, China, Great Britain, France, Mexico, Italy, and the Philippine Islands.

President Truman will shortly name a committee of ten educators to set up the rules of eligibility for applicants, establish standards of selection, the amount of money each scholarship will be worth, and what subjects can be studied where. Veterans will be given preference and probably each state will have a quota.

Passed by the Senate last April, the bill passed the House last week in ten minutes and with an absolute minimum of debate. Yet in scope it is the most comprehensive program of education and cultural relations ever embarked upon by the United States, or any other country in the world. Just as the G.I. Bill of Rights brought higher education within the reach of millions, so the Fulbright plan makes foreign study available to thousands who never otherwise could have studied abroad. If a lasting peace ultimately rests on education and genuine international understanding, the Fulbright bill is a long stop in the right direction.