His­tory of the PBK Schol­ar­ship and Awards Programs

In the found­ing years of the Asso­ci­a­tion, when num­bers and finan­cial sup­port were small, the pri­mary out­reach to col­lege and uni­ver­sity stu­dents was through an annual essay con­test that pro­vided finan­cial grants to win­ners who wrote on rec­om­mended sub­ject fields pri­mar­ily related to the lib­eral arts.  This widely accepted pro­gram existed until the years of World War II.

It was at the end of the war years that a major shift in the Association’s out­reach pro­gram to stu­dents in local col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties occurred.  The year 1948 was the begin­ning of the nearly seventy-year-old Inter­na­tional Schol­ar­ship Fund, to be fol­lowed in time by the Grad­u­ate Study Awards and the High School Awards, with an out­stand­ing total esti­mate of close to $1,400,000 in stu­dent awards.

The idea for the Inter­na­tional Schol­ar­ship Pro­gram dates to 1945, at the end of World War II, when key Asso­ci­a­tion mem­bers were inspired to act to pre­vent another such cat­a­stro­phe.  They termed their pro­gram an “Invest­ment in World Unity” and set out to raise funds to assist inter­na­tional stu­dents study­ing in local higher edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions, par­tic­u­larly those pur­su­ing grad­u­ate degrees who would find it dif­fi­cult because of the lack of United States cit­i­zen­ship to obtain funds.  Dur­ing the 1948 initial-campaign year there was an out­pour­ing of sup­port for the move­ment, and dol­lars began to arrive. By 1958, an esti­mated $45,000 had been raised and allo­cated to stu­dent res­i­dents of a num­ber of coun­tries, who upon com­plet­ing their degrees returned to their home­lands. The pro­gram grew through the years, and although some records were incom­plete, the num­ber of stu­dents assisted was in the hun­dreds.  Like­wise, although incom­plete trea­sury reports do not pro­vide a totally accu­rate num­ber of dol­lars raised and spent, a fair esti­mate is over $1million.

To honor domes­tic stu­dents, the Asso­ci­a­tion in 1980 estab­lished Grad­u­ate Study Awards, a pro­gram, which as it oper­ates today, pro­vides a mon­e­tary award to one grad­u­at­ing Phi Beta Kappa senior from each of the ten col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia with chap­ters.  

In 1995, a mod­est award pro­gram was inau­gu­rated to rec­og­nize up to four aca­d­e­m­i­cally qual­i­fied seniors each year from Los Ange­les high schools, the grants intended to be used pri­mar­ily toward col­lege tuition costs.