The Institute is pleased to support an oral history project documenting the stories and experiences of Commonwealth Scholarship recipients, to be undertaken by the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education.

Menzies’s reforms opened up university education to a whole generation of Australians who otherwise would have been denied access to such an opportunity, hence the project has been dubbed The Menzies Generation.

During the scheme’s operation up until 1973, approximately a third of all Australia’s university graduates had benefited from the scholarships. They covered tuition fess and provided a living allowance, and unlike other forms of ‘bonded’ support did not constrain students to nominated degrees or years of employment service after graduation.

These scholarships had an important role in supporting the expansion of opportunities for university education, as well as in altering public attitudes to university.

This project will build up a rich picture of the generations of students who benefited from the Commonwealth Scholarships through a series of targeted interviews. It will show how the recipients came to obtain their scholarships, how winning a scholarship altered their expectations of attending university and their future career. It will show what living as a scholarship student was like and how well the allowances met the cost of living.

Many of these individuals are now very senior and it is increasingly urgent that we capture these stories before they are lost.