Million Dollar Gift Launches National Scholarship Plan
ONE of Dartmouth's fondest hopes in connection with scholarship aid has been a program of national scholarships that would bring to the College each year a group of especially out- standing boys from all parts of the United States.
That hope has at long last been realized, President Dickey announced last month at the Dartmouth Night convocation honoring Daniel Webster on the 100th anniversary of his death.
Twenty national scholarships, to be supported by a gift to the College of a million dollars, will be awarded annually to boys of outstanding ability and promise, beginning with next fall's entering class, President Dickey told the student- faculty assembly in Webster Hall on the night of October 17. These awards will be called the Daniel Webster National Scholarships and will be given to twenty men in each entering class, with some emphasis on the more distant areas of the nation.
The million dollar gift supporting the new scholarships is being made anony- mously. It will provide approximately half of the endowment required for the program and will be made in installments over a period of years.
Individual grants to the Webster Scholars will vary according to financial need, ranging up to a maximum of $1800 for students from the more distant areas. The scholarships will be continued through- out the four-year course provided the recipient maintains his scholastic record and demonstrates high character and qualities of citizenship. When in operation for all four undergraduate classes by the fall of 1956, the Daniel Webster National Scholarships may be held by as many as eighty men in the College.
President Dickey declared the national scholarship announcement to be the most important he had been privileged to make since taking office as head of the College. He characterized the national scholarships as "a long step forward in assuring for the future the maintenance at Dartmouth of a student body that is broadly representative and that will always include men of the first quality regardless of their financial means.
In other comment on the new program he said, "The most fundamental strength of our democracy has been to offer the opportunity to all for participation in the national life of our country according to the ability of each regardless of economic status. Today a higher education has al- most become a prerequisite for full participation in our national life, but unfortunately increasing cost and rising tuition fees of privately supported institutions of higher learning have created a hurdle which is becoming prohibitive for men of limited means.
"Not only will the Daniel Webster National Scholarships make a Dartmouth education possible for a group of fine and promising men who otherwise could not come, but they will mean a great deal to the future strength of the College itself. The very life of the independent college depends upon being able to take the best who want to come merely on their individual merits."
Freshmen chosen for the Daniel Webster National Scholarships will be selected on the basis of unusual achievement and promise as students and citizens. Financial need will not in every case be a factor in selection, and Webster Scholars who need no scholarship aid will receive $100 prize awards the first year.
Applications for the national scholar- ships at Dartmouth will be received by the Committee on Scholarships and Loans, of which Albert I. Dickerson '30 is chairman. In addition to direct applications, the Committee at its discretion may designate as a Webster Scholar any outstanding student applying for admission.
The Daniel Webster National Scholar- ships will be of top importance in an expanding Dartmouth financial aid program that now involves an annual expenditure of more than a half-million dollars and benefits nearly one-fifth of the student body. They will be added to the present Wheelock, Regional and Trustee Scholar- ships, the regular freshman and upperclass grants from general scholarship funds, and the loan funds and college employment opportunities for undergraduates.
The addition of the national scholarships to its financial aid program brings Dartmouth within the group of leading private colleges and universities that offer such national awards each year. Harvard's imaginative lead in establishing national scholarships in 1934 has since been followed by Yale, Princeton, Brown, Columbia and Cornell among the institutions with which Dartmouth is usually associated.
Special literature describing the Daniel Webster National Scholarships, and other scholarship opportunities at Dartmouth, is being prepared under the direction of Mr. Dickerson and will be distributed widely among the secondary schools in all parts of the country. The College will rely also on the alumni, both individually and in enrollment committee and club groups, to call the Daniel Webster National Scholarships to the attention of top-flight boys. The national awards are counted upon to give dramatic emphasis to students both near and far away that a Dart-mouth education is within the realm of possibility for promising boys of the most meager financial circumstances.
Meanwhile the Dartmouth Development Council, under the general direction of Vice President Justin A. Stanley '33, will continue its long-range efforts to procure for Dartmouth the additional financial resources that will permit further progress toward the goal of broader and more substantial scholarship aid for deserving boys who want to come to Dartmouth. Success in these efforts is essential to the maintenance not only of the absolute quality of the student body but also of the diversity and broadly representative quality of the student body, the educa- tional value of bringing together able young men from all economic levels, and the democratic character that Dartmouth has always considered one of its great strengths.
