Abstract
THE fourteenth annual report for the year ending October 1948 by the Vacation Work Scheme of the Imperial College of Science and Technology has recently been published. The Scheme aims at providing work in Great Britain and abroad for students during their vacation, and it is almost entirely voluntary in nature. During 1948, 829 students participated as compared with 705 in 1947 (this increase being largely due to a greater number of overseas students) ; and this year's total was made up of 200 overseas students and 629 British, 194 of these latter having worked abroad. The bulk of the British students (591 in actual number) was drawn from the three Colleges which form the Imperial College, namely, the Royal College of Science, Royal School of Mines, and City and Guilds College. In January 1948 an international conference was held in London at the Imperial College to unify the procedure and minimize the correspondence for the exchange of students between different States ; ten countries sent representatives and an organisation was founded called the International Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience. During the recent summer vacation this Association has successfully exchanged 950–1,000 students between the participating countries. The next conference of this Association will be held in Copenhagen during January 3–7, 1949. As a result of the establishment of this Association, central organisations have been set up in each country ; the governors of the Imperial College have decided to broaden their machinery, coping with international exchange, to include undergraduates from other universities and colleges in Great Britain, and this information has already been communicated. The aim is to make the scheme self-supporting, if possible, through an affiliation fee payable by each college concerned (based on the number of students sent abroad) together with a registration fee payable by the student. Offers of financial assistance have already been made by Messrs. Lever Brothers and Unilever, Ltd., Rolls Royce, Ltd., and the National Oil Refineries, Ltd., and it is anticipated that the scheme will be in operation for the summer of 1949.
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Vacation Work for Technical Students. Nature 162, 955 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/162955a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/162955a0