Ford Foundation: Education's Do-Gooder

One day last summer Norman Dodd, research director for the House Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations, labelled the Fund for the Republic as "a huge slush fund for a full-scale war on all organizations and individuals who have ever exposed and fought Communists."

If Dodd's attack on this Ford Foundation subsidiary were valid, Henry Ford's empire would have turned full circle from the early 1900's when "Old Henry" and ultra-Americanism were synonymous.

Cures Causes, Not Symptoms

The founder of the Ford Motor Company tried to settle the Great War and impose order on the powers of Europe. Today, the same spirit of humanitarianism impels his heirs in their huge educational and philanthropic venture, "the world's greatest helping hand." The aims are the same--to bring peace and to make the world a better place for all--but the Ford Foundation has set out to accomplish these ends in a realistic manner which may bring far more success than ever greeted Henry Ford. Where the man sought to cure symptoms, the institution attacks fundamental causes.

From research in the behavior of children to extensive programs of education, the nation's largest private philanthropy has allocated its funds for "scientific, educational, and charitable purposes, all for public welfare."

But undertaking humanitarian programs is not the concern of the Ford Foundation alone. The American people donate an average of $5,600,000,000 annually to charitable organizations. Less than 3 per cent of this money comes from Ford and other big foundations like it--Rockefeller, Carnegie, Russell Sage, Guggenheim, and approximately sixty others with more than $10,000,000 in capital. Still more comes from small endowments and outright gifts from individuals.

With the expenses of American colleges continually increasing, more and more emphasis is placed on private charitable support for educational institutions. Faced with problems of expansion, our universities have three major sources of income: tutition, alumni gifts, and foundation support.

The income from private charitable endowments is strictly limited; where it is spent must be carefully calculated. Generally, large foundations have chosen research grants and fellowships as the most advantageous way of supporting education. Colleges are enabled to expand their facilities while doing useful research and while training future scientists and teachers.

In 1874, long before the establishment of the first charitable foundation, President Eliot said that "the citizens of a free State must be accustomed to associated action in a great variety of forms; they must have many local centers of common action, and many agencies and administrations for public objects, besides the central agency of government."

Today, in an era when foundations grow increastingly important in education and scientific research, Eliot's words point to the role which large foundations have established for themselves.

Breaking Down Complacency

Compared to the resources of federal and state governments, the capital of private foundations is meager. But there are legitimate areas of giving in which foundations can make a great contribution. While government action may be bound by considerations of public policy, foundations can often risk unpopularity by undertaking necessary research. Where popular complacency could bind government to inaction, studies by private groups like the Fund for the Republic can break down some of this complacency.

Further, foundations can begin research in projects that seem too lengthy for government support. But, as was the case in cancer research, Foundation progress in early stages of research can stimulate government interest in a program. Far from useless do-gooders, private philanthropic groups play a legitimate and highly important role in the support of public projects.

The Ford Foundation was originally established in 1936. Until 1948 it gave about $1,000,000 a year to colleges in Michigan. In the fall of 1948, however, Henry Ford and Edsel Ford willed almost $500,000,000 to the Foundation.

With this capital, now more than half a billion dollars, the Ford Foundation is in a unique position--how can it spend its money to the maximum benefit of mankind. Its major problem is not lack of funds, but rather where to spend its money to yield the greatest return.

According to H. Rowan Gaither, Jr., the current president of the Foundation, philanthropy, like the old Mormon defense of polygamy, "is a hard thing to live." Gaither's staff receives more than 7000 letters a month, many of them seeking part, if not all, of the Foundation's annual income. As a result, the Foundation must reject far more requests than it can accept.

From $6 to $2,000,000

In the case of a major grant, an institution submits to the Foundation a detailed proposal on the scope, general purposes, and intended uses of a project. The Foundation then sends copies of the proposal to outside experts for appraisal, the budget for the program is examined, and, if recommended, the proposal is either passed or rejected by the Trustees.

In 1953, the Trustees spent $58,000,000 in this manner. Because each request must be individually processed and investigated, the Foundation spent more than $2,000,000 during the same year for administrative expenses. From 1951 through 1953 the Foundation granted $119,000,000 to people and institutions all over the world, for individual projects requiring from $6 to more than $2,000,000.

With few exceptions the Foundation does not administer its own funds, but gives money to established institutions. To obtain a grant, an institution or an individual must plan a definite project.

But if the Fund handed out money to every deserving cause without a guiding policy, it would soon find its vast resources dissipated in the final analysis on worthless projects. The Foundation, therefore, has chosen to allocate its resources to five areas in a definite pattern.

Five Areas of Attack

The five areas in which foundation money is spent represent a broad attack on world problems. In each area the fund has concentrated its money in research projects which are isolated, but which fit into a broad attempt to attack the world's problems. The five areas are:

1) The promotion of international understanding and world peace.

2) The strengthening of democratic institutions and processes.

3) The advancement of the economic well-being of the world.

4) The expansion and the improvement of education.

5) The enlargement of scientific knowledge and understanding about the inner workings of man himself.

"One great need underlies all these problems," the foundation's trustees reported in 1950,"--to acquire more knowledge of man and of the ways in which men can learn to live together."

Through direct grants to universities for specific research projects and through two subsidiary funds set up expressly for the support of education, the Ford Foundation has fulfilled the dictum expressed by the trustees in 1953: "Education in its broadest sense is perhaps the single most promising means for improving human welfare and has been supported in various ways by almost every grant we have made."

To administer its educational funds, the Foundation has set up the Fund for the Advancement of Education and the Fund for Adult Education.

Since its creation in 1951, the Fund for the Advancement of Education has allocated more than $30,000,000 to the attainment of its major objectives. The largest single portion of the Fund's resources has been concentrated on the problem of improving the quality of teaching in secondary schools and colleges. Through two fellowship programs, the Fund has sponsored year-long leaves for more than 1200 selected high-school and college teachers, in order to encourage them to broaden their own knowledge and teaching experience.

Under Fund grants, over 250 college faculty members leave their posts each year to study at other institutions. More than 50 of these teachers come to Harvard annually to observe teaching practices in college courses. Some spend most of their time in the Widener stacks engaged in individual research; others sit in on General Education courses for ideas to use in their own courses.

A Transition Not a Shortcut

Through studies and experimental programs, the Fund has sought to clarify the function of various parts of our educational system. In 1952 Andover, Exeter, Lawrenceville, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton joined in a study which recommended a special integrated curriculum to enable superior students to accelerate their educations. Fifty schools and colleges have joined in programs to bring about a more flexible progression from high school to college, involving advanced courses in high school and advanced standing programs in colleges. With the support of the Fund, twelve colleges have waived their normal entrance requirements and accepted gifted students who have not completed secondary school.

At the College the Fund underwrites most of the expenses of the Advanced Standing program.

The Advanced Standing program here will take effect in the fall in three forms: advanced placement for incoming Freshmen who have done some college-level work; Sophomore standing for first-year students who have completed the equivalent of three full courses before coming to the College, and early admission for able students who have completed the eleventh grade of high school.

A useful modification of rather than an illusory shortcut to education, the Advanced Standing program will try to smooth the transition between high school and college for those gifted students who are retarded by formal requirements.

Another area of concern to the Fund for the Advancement of Education is the balance between liberal arts and practical training for American colleges. In an attempt to appraise different educational philosophies and practices, representatives of the faculties of 21 colleges have formed a committee to analyze the means and ends of American higher education.

At the same time that the Ford Foundation set up the Fund for the Advancement of Education, the second subsidiary agency was established--the Fund for Adult Education. Founded to provide adults with liberal education beyond formal schooling, the Fund seeks to foster "the ability to think independently and the habit of critical thought rather than passive acceptance of ready-made opinions."

Football and King Lear

Through grants to library and university extension association, the Fund fosters discussions groups and public education projects. The Fund was set up, wrote Paul Hoffman, the Foundation's first president, in 1951, because "education is seldom thought of as a life-long activity for everybody. An integral part of the Fund's work," he continued, "is to explore the possibilities of using new means that invention and technology provide to help interest people in ideas."

When Hoffman wrote, the Fund's TV-Radio Workshop was in its experimental stage. But in November, 1952, the Ford Foundation began to use television to bring liberal education into American homes.

Omnibus, a 90-minute television program, has produced an unprecedented range of educational programs--from Shakespeare's "King Lear," to specially-commissioned music, drama, and ballet performances, to a demonstration of "What's New in Football," by the Columbia football team. In every case, Omnibus has attempted to escape the more stereotyped entertainment of most commercial television.

But although it receives the largest single slice of Ford Foundation money, education represents only a part of the Foundation's work. "We will support activities that promise significant contributions to world peace and the establishment of a world order of law and justice," the trustees said in their 1950 report.

From late 1950 through last year, the Foundation allocated nearly $32 million abroad to promote peace. Almost $20 million was spent in Asia to develop the educational and economic institutions needed to put democracy on a firm basis. In Asia, the Foundation has experimented with indigenous agricultural and technical procedures which, if successful, can be applied to a nation on a larger scale. Equal emphasis has been placed on training leaders and technicians who can disseminate these new methods and ideas.

In India the Foundation has trained thousands of skilled "extension workers" who will go back to their own villages and teach new farming methods. In Pakistan, Egypt, Iraq, and Syria the Foundation has supported projects to train women in home economics, nursing, and other vocational skills.

What Price Investigations?

Direct Foundation grants have enabled refugees from behind the Iron Curtain to establish the Free University of Berlin. The East European Fund helps ex-Soviet refugees toward a full participation in American life, and the Chekhov Publishing House, established in 1951, has reprinted 42 Russian titles suppressed inside the Soviet Union in order to preserve democratic contacts for the Russian people.

Seeking to strengthen free institutions in addition to promoting peace, the Foundation in 1952 set up the Fund for the Republic, with an initial grant of $1,000,000. Under Paul Hoffman, the Fund's first president, later under Clifford P. Case, and now Robert M. Mutchins, the Fund for the Republic has undertaken research into the "extent and nature of the internal Communist menace and its effect on our community and institutions." Last year, the Fund sponsored a survey by Samuel P. Stouffer, professor of Sociology here, on the attitudes of the American people toward political and religious non-conformists. A new survey will analyze the effects of Communist investigations on university faculties.

It is still too early to gauge what results will come from these mammouth philanthropic programs. The Foundation has been engaged in its expanded operations for only five years. Some of its money has, perhaps, been wasted; some bogged down by red tape. But as Hoffman said in 1950, when the Foundation began its stepped-up program, "By patience, persistence, and humility, the Foundation may, in the course of time, be of some use to humanity.'