MrBenn wrote:"we have the university scheme which is a way of fast tracking potential members to be our future leaders"
Errr, no - thats not the point of the scheme at all
That's right. The point of the University Scheme is to allow quality candidates to join our fraternity at a slightly younger age, so that they can take their time over getting to the chair and joining other orders. At the end of a typical three year degree course, the candidate would have been initiated, passed and raised and ready to join a lodge where ever their professional career takes them (indeed, Metropolitan Grand Lodge has a number of lodges that welcome joining members from a University Scheme lodge that have moved to London). Maybe the future leaders of Freemasonry in England and Wales will come from one of these scheme lodges, but who knows? All I know is that due to this (and other factors), numbers of masons in London is levelling off and the average age is slowly going down. Surely that's a good thing?