The Robert Menzies Institute is pleased to support an oral history project documenting the stories and experiences of Commonwealth Scholarship recipients, to be undertaken by RMI Fellows Dr James Waghorne and Dr Gwilym Croucher, historians from the University of Melbourne’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education.

Robert Menzies’s reforms opened 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. Menzies was adamant that having an educated nation was essential to the health of a democracy, and the reforms to tertiary education undertaken by his government reflected long-standing beliefs in the value of education that he had developed and honed through speeches, articles, and radio broadcasts through the 1930s and 1940s.

Generations of students were supported to attend university following Robert Menzies’ introduction of Commonwealth Scholarships in 1951. 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 fees 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. It was during the Menzies era that university education first became democratised and accessible, forever changing Australia’s cultural and intellectual landscape while reflecting the values of egalitarianism and social mobility that had long be a defining part of the Australian character.

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 for their future career. It will show what living as a scholarship student was like, 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.