PP3: Barack’s Bursary

In Arkansas I was always impressed with the professional and focussed attitude of the students I met. Unlike the poetry reading, pot smoking and shot downing inhabitants of any British campus – these guys actually wanted to get things done. They even maintained that attitude while growing their hair long and wearing sandals. A truly remarkable feat.

Yet the reason they were so focussed was because their college scholarships required certain minimum grades of them – drop below a certain level and lose the funding – and lose college. That’s quite an incentive. Yet their scholarships didn’t just require academic success, they asked for more than that. They stipulated that the students must put in so many hours of community service or do so many credits in other subjects, or provide tuition to other groups.

Listening to Obama’s latest impressive oratory display he mentioned his own policy of providing government scholarships that required a certain commitment on behalf of the student to put in extra hours in community projects and extra curriculum activities. “We invest in you, you invest in your country and together we will move America forward” – is what I think he said.

Perhaps deep down it is because I hate my own inactivity and wish I had done so much more with my time as a student, but I genuinely think British students need a kick to get them going. Lazing around in bed all day might seem like a noble and much admired tradition, but there is a whole world out there that our drunken sarcasm will never touch. Why are we so content to make wry commentary and yet never to get our hands dirty?

So why not introduce a similar bursary scheme in Britain? Hike up the cost of University but introduce scholarships for everyone that are obtainable only by demonstrating a commitment to your community and to the general welfare of your neighbour. Going hand in hand with Cameron’s ‘National Citizenship Service’ this sort of scheme would surely inject some life into our down and out liberal art students.