Australian National University has received $50 million for scholarships from entrepreneur and philanthropist Graham Tuckwell and his wife Louise.
The donation is the largest ever by an Australian citizen to an Australian university, and will begin in 2014.
“Both my wife and I benefited enormously from our formal education … we would like to give that opportunity to other young Australians,” Mr Tuckwell said today.
“We just went to normal state schools, but our university experience was life transforming.”
Mr Tuckwell built a business career in mining before establishing a commodities trading business in the UK.
ANU said the Tuckwell Scholarsip program would select candidates from a cohort of school-leavers whose ATAR is 95 or above and who “display a rounded set of attributes”.
ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Young welcomed the donation, and said it would allow ANU to attract the “best and brightest” students from across Australia.
He added that the residential experience on offer would help deliver a rounded education to help students do extra curricular activities as well as academic activities.
Professor Young also said the donation may impact Australia’s philanthropy sector.
“One of the important results of the Tuckwell donation will be to set an example of what people who have succeeded in business or other activities can do. I’m very hopeful that this will act as a catalyst for other philanthropists to make similar donations to Australian universities,” Professor Young said.
“It will begin a conversation about the magnitude of these types of contributions and the transformative nature they can have not only on universities but society more broadly.”
Applications for the Tuckwell Scholarship open to students in March and will close on April 2.
Sean Lamb
Science Denier
"ANU said the Tuckwell Scholarsip program would select candidates from a cohort of school-leavers whose ATAR is 95 or above and who “display a rounded set of attributes”."
Thank goodness, for years people with ATARs above 95 and a rounded set of attribute traditionally have terrible difficulty accessing university education.
Dennis Alexander
logged in via LinkedIn
But Sean, surely the issue is to be able to identify school leavers with ATARs over 95 AND a rounded set of attributes: if this scholarship helps find a reliable way to do that, it will have done its job.
Grendelus Malleolus
Senior Nerd
I have rounded attributes. My GP would like them to be less rounded I suspect.
Daniel Boon
logged in via LinkedIn
So even more over-educated born-to-rule-mentality poor life-skilled people joining the unemployed job queue ...
Its a bit like throwing money in the plate at church and hoping it gets to where its needed ...
We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them ...
Roger Keyes
Retired
Would it be more philanthropic if this sort of money were directed to students from lower socio-economic sections of our society? Could there be a means test in the selection of the beneficiaries? Some of us acknowledge that there is a widening gap in the economic well-being of Australians. It is surely time to actually do something serious about it.(The current palaver over Super Tax breaks for the already very well-off relates).