A Canadian philanthropist is giving $120 million to the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship program.

It’s the biggest  single donation to the program since it was founded more than a century ago.

 The Rhodes Trust says  the McCall MacBain Foundation’s grant will help fund the current 83 Rhodes Scholarships to the University of Oxford each year  and enable the Trust to expand the program.

The Rhodes Scholarship was established in 1903 and is the world’s oldest international graduate scholarship program. 

John MacBain is  a former Rhodes Scholar who founded the Geneva-based McCall MacBain Foundation with his wife Marcy.

He says he hopes the scholarship program will expand beyond the mainly English-speaking countries it serves now.