| Detail | Information | | :--- | :--- | | | July 14, 1873 | | Founder | Thacholi “Rex” Vijayan (1841–1899) | | Original Students | 14 (all male, lower caste and impoverished) | | First Female Graduate | 1914 (P. K. Janaki, age 19) | | Original Tuition | Sliding scale: 2 annas to 4 rupees per month | | Notable Alumni | 3 Padma Shri recipients, 1 High Court judge, 2 published poets | | Current Annual Intake | 550 students (100% on full scholarship) | | Unique Rule | No donor wall; no building named after any person except the founder |
His mandate was stark: “No boy or girl from this taluk shall be turned away for want of a rupee. Not now. Not in a hundred years.” rex vijayan scholarship college established 1870s
A first-year chemistry student, Munira, whispers: “Vijayan, sir. And also, a fisherman’s widow named Sarasu from 1968. I never met her. But I passed my entrance exam because she paid for my mother’s teacher.” | Detail | Information | | :--- |
“We are not a brand,” says current Principal Dr. Aisha Kurup, herself a 1984 scholarship alumna. “We are a debt. And a debt, unlike a donation, never forgets to whom it belongs.” At 5:45 AM, the college’s bell—the original 1873 brass bell, recast once in 1949—rings from the old tower. Students gather not in the dining hall, but in the Pay-It-Forward Courtyard , where each student names the person whose scholarship made their own education possible. Not now
The college opened its doors on July 14, 1873, in a converted teak-wood storehouse. There were 14 students. One of them, a cobbler’s son named K. T. Achuthan, would go on to draft key portions of the Cochin State Constitution. While other 19th-century colleges focused on producing clerks for the Empire, Rex Vijayan pioneered a unique model: The Linked-Scholarship System.
By Ananya S. Narayan