Hi Robert,

When I was studying at 北大 years ago, I took a course in 文字学 through the undergraduate Chinese department, and we spent a while covering 甲骨文 before moving into other forms of Chinese script. You might want to check out classes at nearby universities to see if there's anything similar, and to ask professors if you can sit in on the classes. It won't be a scholarship program, but might be a good way of getting a grounding in oracle script and subsequent stages of written Chinese to build on later.

There are plenty of reference materials out there if self-study is more your speed. Your local Xinhua bookstore likely sells one or two 字源 dictionaries, and if you have any stores that specialize in calligraphy in the area, there's a decent chance that one or more of them will sell a reference book with multiple seal/bronze/oracle forms of characters for seal carvers. Our textbook at Beida was 《文字学概要》 by Qiu Xigui (http://book.douban.com/subject/1201835/), which is the best intro to the subject that I've seen.

Regarding scholarships: I don't know of anything specifically focused on oracle script or classical Chinese, but the PRC government offers scholarships for foreigners interested in studying more or less any aspect of Chinese. I haven't looked very closely at what's out there for a few years, but my sense is that there are even more scholarship funds out there at the moment than there were a few years ago. If you're interested, I can put you in touch with a friend of mine who's currently studying at 北大 on a government scholarship.