Dear Commons Community,
Readers of this blog have seen postings before on the influence of corporate-affiliated foundations on education policy in this country. The Hechinger Report yesterday had an article entitled, Who is Running U.S. Higher Education? and raised questions about the undue influence of Gates, Lumina, and other foundations that engage in ”advocacy philanthropy”. The article comments:
“Lumina increased the amount it earmarks annually for programs that drive what is known as student success from $3 million in 2002 to almost $26 million in 2010, and on “productivity” from zero to almost $11 million, according to research conducted at the Claremont Graduate School.
The $36 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, meanwhile, is spending about $73 million a year on grants related to higher education, up from zero in 2004, the researchers found.
About $1 billion a year in all is being poured into education at all levels by these organizations and others, including the Joyce Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
“The emergence of ‘advocacy philanthropy’ has resulted in the unabashed use of foundation strategies to influence government action, policy, and legislation,” the Claremont researchers concluded. That’s a departure, they wrote, “from the established norms in higher education philanthropy, norms that generally created a distance between foundation activity and politics.”
The point should also be made that a number of these philanthropies operate collaboratively to focus on certain issues and policies to maximize their influence.
College and university presidents especially those dependent upon state funding have seen their budgets reduced if not slashed by legislators and governors. Hence there is a good deal of appeal to work with these foundations on grant projects. In the long run, these presidents are selling their souls to the monied interests. Faculties especially those who influence governance at their institutions need to be aware if not wary of grants from these foundations and should push their administrators to go slow or not at all.
Tony
