Philanthropic Foundations’ Social Agendas and the Field of Higher Education

Abstract

Today there are approximately 68,000 private independent foundations that contribute less than 3 % of the total annual revenue to the field of higher education. These groups aspire to use their patronage to transform and reform the structure and practices of higher education, such that their vision for American society takes hold. Since society is once again in an era of mega-foundation activity, this synthesis considers the evidence describing how private foundations have pursued their social agendas to shape the field of higher education.

Introduction

Private philanthropic foundations have been a formidable force in the way the processes and practices of scholarship, teaching , and research are conducted since 1867 (Hollis, 1938). Private foundations have contributed to the field of higher education by donating their resources to campuses, academic programs, research centers, students and faculty , along with professional disciplinary organizations, postsecondary advocacy groups (Bachetti, 2007; Bachetti & Ehrlich, 2007), and increasingly non-university educational programs or think tanks (Reckhow & Snyder, 2014).

While the precise share of philanthropic foundations funds contributed to higher education has varied historically, Havighurst’s (1981) analysis provides evidence that education has been “the principal field of foundation activity because it is viewed as an instrument for directly promoting human well-being ” (p.193). According to the Foundation Center’s¹ analysis of higher education and graduate institutions, foundations provided $7.27 billion annually in grants to higher education (Lawrence & Marino, 2003). Bachetti and Ehrlich’s (2007) summary (which also draws on Foundation Center data) reports a similar figure with $7.1 billion in foundation grants made to U.S. higher, graduate, professional education and postsecondary institutions combined. Katz (2012) shares that the 50 top private foundation donors (of more than 76,000 foundations overall) gave more than $1 billion to higher education in 2010. Among all areas (health, environment, public affairs, etc.) that foundations support (totaling $32.5 billion in 2010 (Foundation Center, 2011)) higher education claims nearly a quarter of it, with Lawrence and Marino (2003) estimating 25.6 % and Bachetti and Ehrlich 22.4 %. Foundations’ grants are directed to a variety of areas within the higher education sphere including: research programs (where health related disciplines received the largest share in the most recent analysis), capital support for college and university endowments, student aid, research, general/operating costs, educational testing organizations such as the College Board, and research and public policy institutes (Lawrence & Marino, 2003). Private foundation giving to higher education , while stunning in scale, represents 2–3 % of the total annual revenues that the field of higher education takes in (Bachetti & Ehrlich, 2007; Clotfelter, 2007;).

The presence of private foundations in higher education has led Cheit and Lobman (1979) to claim that “among the important patrons of higher education , none has had more influence per dollar spent than the private philanthropic foundations” (p.1). They assert that the activities and behaviors of philanthropic foundations’ have had a pivotal role in shaping American higher education ; noting private philanthropic foundations as being largely responsible for liberal and progressive changes in higher education . Others argue that the work of private philanthropic foundations has been responsible for enacting rigid ideological, philosophical, or political social agendas (Fiore, 1997; Lenkowsky & Piereson, 2007; McMillen, 1992; Miller, 1994; People For the American Way, 1996; Selden, 2005; Thümler, 2014a), with some arguing the unwavering and multifaceted pursuit of particular social agendas through philanthropic means may result in exacerbating the inequalities that many funders are seeking to remedy by extending their financial support (Anderson, 1980).

Private foundations have been a focus of scholarly discussion because of the scale of their resources, and particularly for the social agendas they pursue through their funding . Their agendas range from being advocates of radical social reform to “protectors of conservative powers and beliefs” (Karl & Katz, 1981, p. 239). Aside from the accompanying political claims, the essential argument is that power follows money, and private philanthropic foundations have had a prominent role in both funding and facilitating particular social agendas across the field higher education . Foundations have long viewed education as a means to achieving social ends of their choosing (Bachetti & Ehrlich, 2007; Rogers, 2011). Therefore, important questions emerge: Since private foundations seek to financially amplify their social agendas through higher education , what are their agendas? Have these agendas shaped the field of higher education ? If so, how? And what does the existing evidence tell us about the influence of their agendas?

The questions are timely on account of the fact that, as Katz (2012) notes, we are in a period of megafoundation giving, similar to that which occurred a century before with the likes of Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford. Rogers (2015a) comments on the scale and strategy of today’s foundations noting, “There has not been a generation of hands-on, self-made donors of this magnitude in over 100 years and there has never been one with quite the same focus on leveraging public tax dollars to ultimately finance their projects” (p.747). Like the big funders of yesteryear, contemporary private foundation patrons are nearly household names including Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffet, the Walton Family (of Wal-Mart), and the Koch brothers, among others. Clotfelter (2007) summarizes that foundations old and new, especially the largest ones display “an unmistakeable reformist orientation, if not missionary zeal” (p.221) when pursuing their social agendas in hopes of making an impact in education. This enthusiasm must be understood since foundations seek to create their vision of education, by changing education (for better or worse), and then withdrawing their funding (Bachetti & Ehrlich, 2007). The field of higher education is then left to live with the foundations’ reforms, or recover from them.

Scholarship on Foundations’ Social Agendas

The scholarship on foundations’ social agendas and higher education is limited at best. Bachetti (2007) characterizes it as ‘small but illuminating’ and notes:

Data are not readily available at the level where one could reliably assess foundation giving according to reasonably well-defined objectives. It is plausible to conclude that much of what foundations have done is written with disappearing ink on the ledgers of higher education ” (p.255).

In 2013, when The Chronicle of Higher Education did a trend piece about the new era of mega-foundation giving lead by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Parry, Field, & Supiano, 2013), the authors noted that research on foundations and their aims is sparse and verified this position by invoking the editor of the Journal of Higher Education’s perspective, commenting “he [the editor] has yet to receive a well-developed manuscript on the role of philanthropy in academe.” Rogers (2015b) suggests that a lack of a robust and critical literature on foundations’ aims may be that “it seems rude to investigate giving, especially in areas where there is clear need” (p.539).

Within the scholarship that does exists, much of it is historical at this point, and the Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, and Rosenwald foundations have been most thoroughly examined in the literature (Hammack, 2006). Also, typically foundations with assets over $100 million have received a disproportionate amount of attention (Culleton Colwell, 1980; Frumkin, 2002). The big foundations that have been studied are more likely to fall into the progressive camp, and as such, there is substantively less empirical literature that coincides with conservative oriented foundations, and scant literature regarding contemporary foundations. Further, scholarly discourse is mixed in form, ranging from empirical studies to scholarly essays, to thought pieces, and some general essays and a few relevant journalistic accounts.² With these variations, any summary of it inevitably reflects something akin to a sampling bias in the sense that the scholarly literature does not examine all possible foundations whose agendas’ have been related to some activity in the higher education field. Despite these limitations, understanding private foundations ’ social change and reform ambitions for higher education is of critical importance in an era of declining public resources, and a push for extramural private funding .

Scholarly analyses aimed at assessing the impact of social agendas on the field of higher education have tended to focus on campus-based activism (Altbach, 1970; Lipset, 1967, 1968; Lipset & Altbach, 1969; Rhoads, 1997, 1998, 2003; Rhoads & Mina, 2001; Rhoads, Lee, & Yamada, 2002). Much less attention has been paid to the bureaucratic organizational and field-level aspects of social agenda mobilization (Zald & Berger, 1978) in higher education , especially the critical role of resource mobilization for advancing social change aims - which is precisely the task of private foundations . Moreover, this chapter provides a summative review of what has been written about the social agendas of U.S. philanthropic private foundations , and the corresponding influence these aims have had on American institutions of higher education .

Plan for the Chapter

Examining the social agendas of private philanthropic foundations in shaping the field of higher education is a quest to explore the role of institutionalized social agendas upon a field that is primarily concerned with advancing the public good – a concept that is inevitably laden with multiple meanings in a pluralistic democracy. This analysis is a story of mobilization; mobilizing ideas and mobilizing resources in an effort to achieve an often contested but idealized vision of higher education , or an idealized vision of society through higher education . I invoke scholarship from a variety of disciplines in addition to the higher education literature, with substantial contributions from sociology and organizational studies, supplemented by supporting work from law and political science, geography , history, and nonprofit management to synthesize the theories, arguments, and evidence that cover my topic. The focus of this synthesis is fundamentally concerned with organizational and institutional phenomena. I aim to gather what is known about the field-level, systemic, consequences of private, independent foundation activity, as opposed to considering how foundation influence has helped individual campuses or individuals (students , scholars, or administrators) without really changing the larger structure and realities of postsecondary education in America.

This chapter begins by sorting through the theoretical positions that inform the analysis, including an overview of the primary tenets of organizational analyses, institutionalism, and the appropriateness for a field-level consideration of my topic. I then turn to the theoretical literature that speaks directly to the ways in which the mobilization of sentiments occurs within a field, and the likely consequences of mobilization. After the theoretical positioning of the chapter, I provide information about the historical context of foundations in higher education . I follow the historical situating with an overview of foundations’ social agendas . I then use the literature on the philanthropic foundations in higher education to provide a synthesis of the ways in which the creation and/or modification of institutional practices and behaviors has coincided with the foundations’ pursuits of social agendas . Lastly I offer summative comments about the dynamics between higher education and philanthropic foundations with regard to enacting social agendas .

Private Philanthropic Foundations Described and Defined

At the most fundamental level, a foundation is a grant-making institution (Parrish, 1973). Grant-making foundations can emerge from communities or established institutions such as churches, universities, or corporations, and individuals or families (Harrison & Andrews, 1946). The Foundation Center, the foremost organization which collects data on foundations in the United States, divides foundations into four distinct categories: community, corporate, operating, or independent. These classifications function to specify the relationship of the foundation to the source of funds. A community foundation is publicly sponsored and makes grants within a community; a corporate foundation receives its funds from corporate profits and usually grants money for corporation-related activities or fields; an operating foundation is part of an established institution that conducts research or provides a direct service and uses its money for foundation programs; and an independent foundation is usually derived from a single source and has broad discretion to make grant in fields it deems worthy (Lawrence & Atienza, 2006).

Since the start of the twentieth century the American legal system, as a window into the cultural norms of a society, has recognized that (1) foundations have social agendas , (2) that these agendas prompt different types of grant-making behavior , and (3) that there are multiple interpretations about whether the agenda and accompanying funded activity is actually providing some “good” to the public (Andrews, 1950, 1956; Linton, 1937; Schnabel, 2005). The classic legal definition of a charity that allows foundations the freedom to act according to their ideal vision of society comes from the Massachusetts 1867 Jackson v. Phillips case (Andrews, 1950, 1956), which ruled:

A charity, in the legal sense, may be more fully defined as a gift, to be applied consistently with existing laws, for the benefit of an indefinite number of persons, either by bringing their minds or hearts under the influence of education or religion, by relieving their bodies from disease, suffering or constraint, by assisting them to establish themselves in life, or by erecting of maintaining public buildings or the works of otherwise lessening the burdens of government. (cited in Andrews, 1956, p.11)

Legal scholars, Linton and Schnabel concur that the critical piece of this ruling was its creation of a legal basis to justify a variety of foundation activities that were deemed to have politically different goals, as long as the goals were pursued with tactics that conformed to existing law.

With the establishment of the income tax in 1913, and the estate tax in 1917, determining whether a foundation’s social agenda and grant-making activities met the legal specification as charitable or uncharitable took on an increased importance (Karl & Karl, 2001). Philosophically, the tax exemptions have been offered for charitable giving on the premise that there is intrinsic value in a non-governmental sector where citizens are engaged in trying to make society better. According to contemporary tax code, this principle translates to a logistical definition where private philanthropic foundations file a 990-PF form with the Internal Revenue Service. However, relying on the tax classification to define private philanthropic foundations is overly broad, especially in light of a more complete operational definition. The 1969 Tax Reform Act (TRA) delineated the unique characteristics of a ‘private foundation’ compared to the host of other charitable entities in America (Lawrence & Atienza, 2006); specifying that a private foundation receives funding from few sources and the money is used to make grants and operate programs (Cuninggim, 1972; Heydemann & Toepler, 2006; Parrish, 1973). Heydemann and Toepler note that according to the 1969 TRA the defining characteristic of a private foundation is “the source of income rather than the donor intent or the act of dedicating private assets to public purposes” (italics added for emphasis p. 10). The 1970 congressional Commission on Foundations and Private Philanthropy (Peterson Commission) pushed the 1969 definition a bit further specifying that the private foundations typically have a single (or a few) donors, and their primary function is giving money as opposed to “doing” (Parrish, 1973).

Presently, the Foundation Center defines a private philanthropic foundation as:

A nongovernmental, nonprofit organization with its own funds (usually from a single source, either an individual or a family, or a corporation) and program managed by its trustees and directors, established to maintain or aide educational, social, charitable, religious, or other activities serving the common welfare, primarily by making grants to other nonprofit organizations. (Lawrence & Atienza, 2006, p. X)

Andrews (1950, 1956, 1958, 1961; Harrison & Andrews, 1946) has repeatedly defined a foundation in a nearly identical fashion: “a nongovernmental, nonprofit organization having a principal fund of its own, managed by its own trustees or directors, and established to maintain or aid social, educational, charitable, religious or other activities serving the common welfare.”

Definition

For my purposes here, I have chosen to draw upon the Foundation Center’s definition that was informed from Andrews’ scholarship and work in the foundation field. Like many others, I have chosen to separate corporate foundations from my review, and concentrate on those private foundations that are labeled independent.³ Moreover, when I refer to private foundations , I am referencing independent private philanthropic foundations that are typically endowed by a single source (e.g. a family or group of individuals), have a board of directors or trustees which often includes a tie to the family or donor, and have the flexibility and legal authority to exercise broad discretion in executing its funding decisions.

The funding strategies of the private foundations referred to throughout are typically structured in one of four ways:

An accumulating foundation where none of the principal and not all the income is spent, at least for a stated period; a perpetuity, which may spend income but not principal; a discretionary perpetuity, which is permitted to spend part or all of its principal, but is not enjoined to do so; or a liquidating fund, whose complete liquidation is compulsory, usually within a stated term. (Andrews, 1950, pp. 98-99)

Depending on the philosophy of the donor or professional staff, the funds are distributed in ways that are designed to provide relief or palliative aid to the recipient or to transform a social problem by directing aid towards understanding the underlying cause or source of the problem (Weaver, 1967). These two concepts of philanthropic giving stand in opposition to one another, where the palliative perspective is designed to alleviate suffering for those that stand outside of the dominant political and economic system, and the transformative approach views the palliative approach as an endless cycle of giving and thus “seeks the new knowledge and the new understanding which can permanently improve the condition of men” (Weaver, 1967, p. 25). Both the financial structure of the fund and the donor’s philosophy toward giving provide a number of options for foundations to achieve their philanthropic objectives.

Theoretical Perspectives Informing Field-Level Phenomena

A proper situating of the topic of private foundations ’ influence on the field of higher education requires an analytical perspective that accounts for social conditions, prevailing cultural and economic ideas, and organizational structures that have contributed to the promotion and dissemination of the social agendas of private philanthropic foundations across the field of higher education . Broadly speaking, an organizational analysis fits these requirements since this approach is used to evaluate phenomena within and across organizations, including their structures, functions, and resources (McAdam & Scott, 2005). In discussing theory, I begin with an introduction on the study of organizations, as a precursor to discussing social institutions, institutionalism, and neoinstitutionalism, followed by a discussion of fields. I then turn to theory that addresses mobilization in an organizational field, and philanthropic foundation activity in social institutions.

Organizational Analysis

Historically, organizational analyses have relied on three broad perspectives, the rational, natural, and open systems views (Scott, 2003). Rational perspectives emphasized technical functions, formal roles, and organization goals used to maximize organizational efficiency; natural systems perspectives focused less on formal hierarchy and structure and more on the actually activity of the organization, even if it diverges from formal processes; and open systems built on the rational and natural systems perspectives and invited analysis that valued the influence of environmental factors on organizational and field-level activities (Scott, 2003). Scott describes open systems perspectives as those theoretical positions that view “organizations [as] congeries of interdependent flows and activities linking shifting coalitions of participants embedded in wider material-resource and institutional environments” (Scott, 2003, p. 29).

Emerging from the open systems perspective, institutional theory gained considerable attention as an inclusive perspective that provided tremendous flexibility in understanding organizational phenomenon. One of the hallmarks of institutional theory was the extent to which it accounts for the influence of the environment on an organization or field (Scott, 1991, 2003). The institutionalism of the 1960s stressed how competing information in the organization’s environment influenced its technical functions such as acquiring knowledge of operations or materials and helping to explain competing information that influenced organizational action, and resource acquisition, reliance, or use (Scott, 1975, 1991). The institutional perspective reified a view of organizations as having formal structures that were concomitant with rationalized bureaucratic processes (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Scott, 1975).

Meyer and Rowan (1977) were influential in expanding institutional theory and thus framing neoinstitutional theory. Their scholarship built upon former interpretations of institutionalism and placed greater emphasis on the role of culture and shared cognitive systems in determining organization behavior and activity. Meyer and Rowan stressed how taken-for-granted “rules, understandings, and meanings attached to institutionalized social structures” (Meyer & Rowan, 1977, p. 343) contributed to the norms of rationality used to dictate organizational structure and legitimacy. They note that organizations’ positions, policies, and programs produce rationalized myths, and that these myths emerged from diverse sources such as public opinion, elites, the educational process, social prestige, legal and legislative processes, professions, ideology, accreditation and certification, regulatory policies, and government among others (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Scott, 1991). These authors, along with DiMaggio and Powell (1983) argued that in order to fully make sense of organizational action, it required looking at the complex relational networks in which organizations exist, along with the manner in which organizations gain legitimacy by responding to the environmental cues they receive. Further, the neoinstitutionalist theorists insisted on expanding the boundaries of organizational analysis to include not only formal structures but cultural meanings that assert environmental pressure on organizations (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Meyer & Rowan, 1977). Collectively, these theorists concretized a position that the process of legitimate organizational action and behavior did not simply correspond to rational theories of efficiency or alignment with the formally stated goals and structures in organizations and fields, but legitimacy was born from a more complex dynamic of environmentally embedded meanings.

Delimiting Boundaries

By virtue of the express attention on organizational environments, neoinstitutional theory requires that one situate the boundaries of one’s analysis. As Scott (1991) points out, neoinstitutional analyses address various dimensions of organizations and their environments, and thus bounds them as organizational sets, populations, or fields depending on the question at hand. Each of these boundaries is more or less well-suited for understanding certain types of relationships between organizations and their environments. The organizational field (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) – which Scott’s synthesis points out has also been termed: functional organizational field, industry system, societal sector – has become the unit to examine the critical exchange with partners, funding and/ or regulatory groups, professional associations, and “other sources of normative cognitive influence” (Scott, 1991, p. 173). The organizations engaged in a common service or product must contend (in this case higher education ) with the exchange partners that constitute the field. Moreover:

The functional field serves as a useful basis for both bounding the environment of an organization whose structure or performance is to be examined from an institutionalist perspective as well as defining a significant intermediate unit – a critical system in its own right – to be employed in macrosociological analyses. (Scott, 1991, p. 174)

Outcome Focus

Field-Level Emphasis

For added precision, it is necessary to precisely indicate what constitutes a field. Therefore, a field is a “broad organizational infrastructure that contains horizontal interactions having to do with networks and competition and vertical authority relationships that involve actors such as governmental agencies and trade associations” (Lounsbury & Pollack, 2001). A field-level organizational approach to a topic indicates organizations are being considered in their aggregate, and thus “constitute a recognized area of institutional life” (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Field-level institutional analyses perceive “organizational fields as arenas of power relations” (Brint & Karabel, 1991, p. 355) and are concerned with structures of power and opportunity that constrain or promote change and transformation throughout the field.

Specifications

When applying a neoinstitutionalist field perspective to the question of social agendas shaping the practices and behaviors of higher education , the field consists of the degree granting institutions, along with agencies that work alongside these institutions and concern themselves with higher education . Curtis and Zurcher (1973) would thus describe higher education as a multi-organization field, meaning that the field is comprised of both the total number of focal organizations in the field (higher education institutions) and the entities to which the focal organization either has the opportunity to or chooses to establish specific linkages. Fig. 5.1 showcases the structure of the field of higher education , with the state in a vertical position because of its authority to higher education , and the other sectors horizontally aligned with higher education . The multi-organizational field of higher education is nested in the political and cultural environment of society, and the distribution of resources, depicted by the dark dotted line, runs throughout all segments of society. Higher education institutions are represented by a stacked triangle because of the hierarchy of institutional prestige that exists.

Fig. 5.1

The field of higher education

The focus on private foundations directs focus to an intermediate unit in the environment, to consider how their patronage has shaped higher education in the aggregate. The precise relevance of the neoinstitutional perspective in this field-level analysis of higher education is that it is centered on contemplating the evidence that speaks to the cultural or cognitive meanings that emerge from the social agendas of the private philanthropic foundations acting in the higher education arena. Further, the benefit of a field-level analytical lens is that it more fully embraces the distinguishing characteristics of a neoinstitutional perspective to illuminate the “direct or indirect pressures emanating from the broader cultural and political environment” (Frickel & Gross, 2007, p. 209).

Practices and Behaviors

When considering the question of how foundations have ‘shaped’ higher education , their influence can be examined through institutional structures, legal shifts (statute or policy ), and/or cultural modifications (Giugni, McAdam, & Tilly, 1999) that have been tied to philanthropic foundation activity. I’ve chosen these aspects of higher education - structure, statute or policy , and culture - because they reflect the primary tenets of neoinstitutional theory and stress the presence of field-level dynamics. From a structural perspective, institutions’ practices and behaviors consist of the formal functions or standard processes used to carry out the service of higher education to their varied constituencies, be they students , faculty , government officials, professional associations, alumni, etc. These structural practices and behaviors may be constituted in written guidelines, patterns of organizing, or emerge as taken-for-granted and legitimated forms of acceptable conduct in the field. Cultural modifications of higher education have less to do with foundations’ desire to see the adoption of particular management approach or organizational structure, and more to do with basic assumptions and beliefs that have become taken-for-granted tools in conveying meaning or a particular interpretive frame (Schein, 1992; Swidler, 1986). Structural and cultural practices and behaviors are not mutually exclusive; that is, neoinstitutional theory emphasizes the iterative relationship between these two concepts. Further, legal or statutory regulations are an excellent example of structure and culture not being independent of one another because theoretically, law is essentially a structural means of reflecting culturally constituted ideas about collective norms of appropriate conduct. For example, when foundations’ fund work to shape the laws that govern how higher education operates, such patronage provides a lens into their social agenda, and their vision of what constitutes a public good.

Summary

To understand how higher education has been shaped by the social agendas of horizontally positioned agencies (e.g. private philanthropic foundations), I adopt an institutional perspective that acknowledges that organizations are situated and affected by their external environments, (b) a neoinstitutional perspective because I am interested in considering social agendas which are cultural and cognitive modes of social pressure (Orru, Woolsey Biggart, & Hamilton, 1991) that have emerged from the environment and exert some force onto higher education institutions, and (c) a field-level perspective because the formal structural relationships between higher education institutions and private philanthropic foundations are horizontal in nature (there are no instances where a private foundation has formal authority over the field of higher education , such as chartering or exercising statutory regulative authority).

Field-Level Explanations for Social Agenda Mobilization

Generally speaking, scholars have interpreted the socially motivated agendas of philanthropic foundations’ activities as a process of formally institutionalizing social movement ambitions into the existing social structures (Cress & Snow, 1996; Jenkins, 1983). This line of inquiry has emerged from the resource mobilization view (McCarthy & Zald, 1977, 1987a, 1987b) of social movement analysis. Before exploring this theoretical thread, it is worth mentioning that foundations are not social movements per se; and they are not necessarily social movement organizations (SMOs). However, since the theory used to describe foundation behavior in organizational fields has been inspired and built from the work on social movements, there is utility in delineating the relationship between social movements, SMOs, and resource mobilization.

Social Movements and SMOs

Social movements are “the mobilization of sentiments in which people take actions to achieve change in the social structure and the allocation of value” (Zald & Useem, 1987, p. 249). Typically the classical view of social movements, that grew out of the 1960s, focused on grassroots participation of an aggrieved group (McCarthy & Zald, 1987a). Often, these aggrieved groups would form SMOs, or “a complex, or formal organization that identifies its goals with the preferences of a social movement or countermovement and attempts to implement those goals” (McCarthy & Zald, 1987b) as a means of facilitating their social movement objectives. Over time, as social movement aims and the forms of SMOs evolved, the classical view of social movements and SMOs has been gradually replaced by a professionalized view (McCarthy & Zald, 1987a), where movements are enacted by “full-time employees whose professional careers are defined in terms of social movement participation, by philanthropic foundations” (p.340). McCarthy and Zald (1987a) describe social movement professionalization as the bureaucratization of social discontent. It is these professional organizations, which are exemplified by private philanthropic foundations (Jenkins, 1983), that have reoriented social movement activity from a position where the aggrieved group involved itself with the social change initiatives directly, to one where the professional group/foundation ‘spoke for’ those that would be benefiting primarily from the achievement of the social movement aims (Jenkins, 1983, 1987). Professionalized private philanthropic organizations are thus structurally positioned as intermediaries in the process of mobilizing social movement aims.

Resource Mobilization

Mobilization generally is defined as, “the process by which a group secures collective control over the resources needed for collective action” (Jenkins, 1983). Theoretically resource mobilization moves beyond an original conception of social movement activity as erratic and emotional, and focuses squarely on the rational and purposive aspects of collective organizing, and the role that external groups have in advancing social change objectives (Pichardo, 1988). Although resource mobilization theory initially emerged with two distinct and somewhat opposing threads, the professional operational model (McCarthy & Zald, 1977) and the political process model (McAdam, 1983); these two views have been resolved to affirm their most basic tenets, that resource mobilization inevitably involves political behavior , and elite groups derive their power from within institutions (Pichardo, 1988). Klandermans (1997) notes that for multi-organizational fields, mobilization is essentially a political exercise in determining whose definition of the situation will prevail when intermediary organizations establish links to focal organizations.

Initiatives, Actions, Tactics, Strategies

With regard to the strategy involved with a specific agenda and its resource mobilization, the choice of tactics are constrained by the available repertoire (Williams, 1995) and “the relative success of previous encounters, and ideology” (McCarthy & Zald, 1977, p. 19) in the organizational field. The tactics that an organization uses to advance its social agenda is dependent on a “readily interpretable template” that is deemed socially and politically salient and legitimate in the historically socially situated context (Williams, 1995). Resources mobilization tactics may include a combination of efforts to recruit supporters or persuade bystanders, transform mass and elite publics into sympathizers, or neutralize opponents (McCarthy & Zald, 1977; Williams, 1995). The choice of tools to use for mobilizing a specific aim consists of both structural resources such as money, member networks and ties to elites, or cooperating organizations; and cultural resources which are self-conscious interpretive meaning frames that an organization uses to maximize social and political opportunities to embody the substantive content of the organization’s ultimate agenda (Williams, 1995).

Ylvisaker’s (1987) analysis of the role that foundations have on nonprofits, indicated that although legally they are barred from lobbying, “they can stimulate governmental action through the research, education, experimentation, conferencing, and publications they finance” (p.373). Roelofs (2003) describes the normal modes of influence as using “ideology, grants, litigation, policy networks, and think tanks ” (p.70). These tactics ultimately lead foundations toward involvement in higher education , given that colleges and universities comprise the social institution that is responsible for knowledge production, idea generation, research, and often policy analysis as well. Further, Ylvisaker notes that foundations assert their agenda by being selective, choosing ideas and approaches that have salience and evoke change; being collaborative with other funding sources; using their power and initiative to command public attention and set standards for social spending; and extending their influence through commissioned studies, leadership statements, conferences, and grant announcements. Prewitt (2006) conceives of these multiple tactics foundations use as dependent on a foundation’s ultimate social objectives; noting that when foundations want changes in ideas they pursue research and intellectual efforts, if they desire governmental intervention they pursue policy analysis or advocacy; and if they seek to change opinions, they pursue public education or media communications. In each of these scenarios, higher education is a natural agent to look toward to advance a social agenda as higher education is the institution that engages in each of the tasks described.

Private foundations ’ approach to philanthropy has consisted of being a facilitator of social and public causes; serving as a grant-making instrument to (1) provide the government with a path for intervention on an issue, (2) foster and stimulate public interest is an issue, or (3) fund initiatives for which the government has discontinued funding (Bjork, 1962; Frumkin, 1999). For example, Bjork notes how in the 1920s and 1930s foundation funding contributed substantially to the fields of medicine and public health when the government was not able to address these issues fully. Fleishman (2007) typifies the facilitative strategies of foundations into three classifications: driver, partner, or catalyst (for a thorough description see Table 5.1). The driver foundation seeks to maximize its power to direct the solution to the problem or initiative by specifying the process, outcomes, and coordinating the details along the way. The partner foundation seeks to possess some degree of control over the process, but looks to other non-profit organizations that already have the expertise and the motivation to work on the problem. The catalyst foundation extends seed money to a variety of grantees that are generally interested in the problem and then it allows these groups to devise all the details of the initiative to attempt to fulfill the desired goal (Fleishman, 2007). Fleishman notes that the three approaches do not have clear boundaries, and that depending on the “character, specificity, and ripeness of the problems in which foundations are interested, and the nature of those institutions whose behavior they are seeking to change” (p. 4) one role or a combination of roles may emerge as the ultimate means of coordinating its grant process and social aims.

Table 5.1 Typology of roles for implementing foundation objectives (Fleishman, 2007)

Consequences of Mobilization

From the broad array of scholarly work on the resource mobilization perspective of philanthropic foundation social movement activity, a conceptual tension has developed. Essentially, the debate consists of whether private philanthropic foundations exert a social control or channeling (Jenkins, 1998) influence across a field by means of philanthropic foundation groups aligning their financial resources with their social goals and views (Cress & Snow, 1996; Pichardo, 1988; Proietto, 1999).

Channeling is the act of one group working to advance its interest by directing resources through another entity (Jenkins, 1998; Jenkins & Eckert, 1986). Social control describes the limits that that foundation funding places on the funded organization’s actions. These differing conceptions of funding are prefaced upon competing assumptions about what motivates elite foundation actors. Kriesi (1996) has observed that mobilization is generally motivated by advancing some collective good and/or avoiding some collective ill. In the case of foundations and the elites that endow them or populate their staffs, mobilization is often conceived of as being motivated by a desire to: control the overall impact of a movement, exploit the movement for the funders’ gains, contain undesirable or incompatible views, or achieve gains relative to other elite groups (Corrigall-Brown, 2016; Pichardo, 1988). Each of these conceptions of foundation motivation extends the social control and channeling theses. Of the two ideas, the social control thesis has earned a more prominent place theoretically based on the empirical work of Jenkins (Jenkins, 1989, 1998; Jenkins & Eckert, 1986; Jenkins & Halcli, 1999) emphasizing that foundations have the effect of moderating or softening radical agendas. However, DiMaggio’s (1991) research demonstrates that in the absence of applying a social control lens to the study of foundations, the more general consequence of channeling foundation monies through organization is that philanthropic foundations have served to foster the “institutionalization and structuring of organizational fields” (p. 267).

Methodologically, scholars have acknowledged that attributing the consequences or outcomes solely to the mobilization of resources can be problematic (Giugni, 1998; Giugni et al., 1999). Suggesting that one single act is the causal factor in achieving a social goal would undermine the open-systems (Scott, 2003) view of organizations that is associated with a resource mobilization perspective. Further, as Prewitt (2006) points out, “there is no metric of foundation impact; there is not even a theory of social change that might point to a measurement strategy” (p. 36). Similarly, there is a slight tendency to overemphasize the explicit or purposive intentions of a foundation’s agenda, which might have the subsequent effect of overlooking the unintended, indirect, or secondary consequences that stem from a foundation advancing or mobilizing a given social agenda (Giugni, 1999). Unintended or indirect consequences can be short or long-tem, and they can consist of things such as modifying features of social life, changing demographic patterns in society, broadening the sphere of what is considered legitimate action, or transforming public discourse (Giugni, 1999).

Elite Mobilization

Theoretically, both the social control and channeling perspectives on philanthropic foundations’ resource mobilization focus exclusively on “support from elite external organizations” (Cress & Snow, 1996, p. 1001), which is an inherent consequence of studying private philanthropic foundations given the source of their founding being a substantive source of wealth. Vogus & Davis (2005) note the particular value of organizational analyses that seek to understand elite mobilization stating, “studying elite mobilization extends social movement theory beyond its focus on disenfranchised groups and grassroots mobilization … and to unpack a dynamic that remains underexplored in the social movements literature” (p.98). Clemens (2005) highlights the value of using both organizational and social movement theories as a theoretical method of understanding the varied dimensions and “many ways of creating and exerting power” (p.365) as represented through people (elites), resources, or politics – three prominent dynamics in the study of foundations operating within fields.

Theoretically, the study of foundation patronage and resource mobilization has been connected to social movements, but again, foundations are not necessarily social movements or social movement organizations in a rigorous sense. As McCarthy and Zald (1977) point out, organizations like foundations, that are engaged in resource mobilization, may possess only a loose commitment or no commitment to the values of that underlie a social movement. The application of a theory that is complementary to a topic but not fully attentive to its key actors highlights one of the weak spots in the study of foundations and their influence in an organizational field. Nevertheless, foundation involvement within higher education certainly contains characteristics that are reminiscent of classical social movement phenomenon. For instance, Fleishman (2007) remarks on the position of foundations in society by stating that “any institution charged with an obligation to reform the status quo and redistribute opportunity and power in society are bound to be caught in controversy from time to time” (Fleishman, p. 251). His statement is a testament to the social reality that foundations, through their mere involvement in the process of distributing and mobilizing massive resources for the “public good” are bound to be embroiled in contestations that involved the distribution of power and resources in society – very much a central concept to social movement theory.

When the idea of resource mobilization is applied to foundation activity in higher education , collective action and mobilization are essential. Whether institutions or scholars are in a position to acquire available resources (foundation funds and grants), or grantors are seeking willing recipients (institutions or individuals) to fulfill the aims of a particular pet project or program, collective organizing, political salience, and the use of institutionalized or professionalized programs are necessary. Katz (1985) notes that the decision of foundations to fund initiatives in higher education is often equivalent to constituting intellectual policy ; when resources tend to dictate the path of intellectual pursuits or disciplines, foundations exert an incredible authority allocating value and legitimacy to academic endeavors.

Summary

This synthesis employs a combined analytical approach, coupling facets of organizational theory with social movement theory. Specifically, a field-level neoinstitutional frame is coupled with resource mobilization theory to provide a basis for understanding how private foundations’ agendas and grant-making functions’ explain or predict field-level changes in higher education . Pichardo (1988), DiMaggio (1991), and McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald (1996) concur that integrating the organizational and social movement theoretical perspectives can serve as an especially fruitful means for exploring field-level dynamics when foundations are the intermediary actors. Condliffe Lagemann (1999) regards the increasing theoretical awareness of foundations acting in fields as one of the key insights for invigorating foundation scholarship. Combined analyses are essential to understanding organizations’ priorities, resources, survival, and growth (Zald & Berger, 1978). Zald, Morrill, and Rao (2005) argue that the way organizations respond to internal and external demands for change are best understood by considering the social movement forces that are interacting with organizational conditions. Integrating these perspectives provides the flexibility to synthesize the emergent and established forces of power that shape society-wide opinions and beliefs with the structural procedures and practices that predict and support organizational legitimacy. McAdam and Scott (2005) refer to this type of change as the ‘organizationally mediated social change’ process.

Private Philanthropic Foundations and Social Agendas

Historical Roots

Historically, the idea of philanthropic giving has been tied to prevailing social customs regarding social structures, social and economic obligations to one’s community, religious and moral concerns about preserving and creating a particular social order, and ideas about the order of power and control of wealth by the state (Andrews, 1950; Harrison & Andrews, 1946; Hollis, 1938; Parrish, 1973). Throughout history, giving to education has held a strong position as a worthy charitable cause.

Hollis (1938) states “funding wealth for the general welfare as directed by donors … can clearly be tracked back to Plato, who bequeathed to his successors, for the increase and diffusion of knowledge, his Academy and endowment of productive land” (p. 15). There were also other instances where the foundation was used “as a legal devise for perpetuating private will in public purposes” (Hollis, p. 15), such as Ptolemies assisting with a library and research agency , Pilney the Younger funding a school, Cimon the Athenian improving the Academy grounds to provide an ideal teaching environment for Socrates and Plato (Andrews, 1950; Harrison & Andrews, 1946; Hollis, 1938). These Greek examples of elite patronage displayed the earliest evidence of philanthropy and its long-standing relationship to higher education .

Charitable foundation giving attained formal legitimacy by securing legal status through the 1601 English Statute of Charitable Uses (Andrews, 1950; Harrison & Andrews, 1946; Linton, 1937; Ylvisaker, 1987). The Statute was an act passed by Queen Elizabeth that established a legislative precedent (Linton, 1937) for what constituted something as charitable, including: “relief of the aged, impotent and poor people.... maintenance of the sick and maimed soldiers and mariners, schools of learning , free schools, and scholars in universities” (Statute cited in Andrews, 1950, p. 37; Harrison & Andrews, p. 16). Typically, at the time of the Statute of Charitable Uses, the aid took on the form of community relief societies, funds to provide immediate respite, rather than foundations. Nevertheless, the Statute functioned to: (1) secure a permanent position for making philanthropic gifts to education and scholars; and (2) classify giving to education as something that should be construed as a public good.

The Formal Establishment of Foundations as U.S. Institutions with Social Purpose Aims

Early American philanthropy and early American higher education evolved in a nearly parallel fashion. Yeakey (2015) describes how donors who accrued great wealth from business were instrumental in establishing many US universities - Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Harvard, Vanderbilt, Yale, University of Chicago, Columbia, Spelman, Howard, Purdue, UC-Berkeley – several of which bear the name of the donor. The historical motivations for directing financial support to higher education has nearly always been accompanied by a vision for society (Curti & Nash, 1965).

American Ideals and Philanthropy

Fleishman (2007) regards the desire to promote the public welfare through philanthropy as having its deepest roots in uniquely American democratic ideals; the belief in an individual’s sense of freedom and independence combined with the notion of possessing a responsibility to provide for the greater good. The essential American ethos of freedom and duty, set against the altruistic tradition of religious life that was present in Colonial times, was a determining factor in firmly establishing charitable giving as an activity to promote both individual and associational (or religious) beliefs for the betterment of society (Fleishman, 2007). Overtime, these American ideas have proliferated and allowed for the expansion of a growing number of specialized associations, foundations, and organizations (Fleishman).

Philanthropic foundations in the United States began to slowly emerge in the later part of the nineteenth century (Andrews, 1956). Between 1790 and 1890 very few foundations formed in the U.S.; the earliest among them focused on palliative and relief strategies to social problems: the first being the Franklin Funds, est. 1790, and the Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, est. 1800 (Harrison & Andrews, 1946; Hollis, 1938). Following these foundation pioneers, the 1846 Act of Congress confirmed James Smithson’s $508,000 bequest to the U.S. government to start Smithsonian Institute (and its subsequent affiliated programs) which was “established for the increase and diffusion of knowledge” (Andrews, 1961, p. 158). The establishment of the Smithsonian was crafted to be a ward of the government rather than a private entity, but it served as a model for merging philanthropic giving with the creation and dissemination of knowledge.

The somewhat slow development of private foundations throughout the nineteenth century has been attributed to economic conditions of the Colonial period (Harrison & Andrews, 1946; Hollis, 1938). Private wealth was somewhat uncommon in the largely agricultural U.S. economy (Harrison & Andrews, p. 18). Further, the prevailing cultural view of American life from Colonial times through much of the nineteenth century was an egalitarian one where democratic society was idealized as allowing for anyone to become rich or ‘self-made’ (Pessen, 1971). This widely shared perception contributed to a generalized belief that there were also “relatively few cases of severe want” (Harrison & Andrews, p.18). It is notable however, that Pessen’s (1971) analysis has demonstrated that antebellum era wealth transfer was typically intergenerational, with upward mobility extremely rare among the working and lower classes moving up.

Private independent foundation philanthropy in U.S. education gained firm standing in 1867 when George Peabody established the Peabody Education Fund “to aid the striken South” (Hollis, 1938, p. 21). Peabody’s first gift of $1,000,000 was aimed to promote education for Southern Blacks and the poorer classes (Curti & Nash, 1965; Hammack, 2006; Harrison & Andrews, 1946; Smith, 2001) as well as poor classes in the South. Other foundations that emerged during the later-half of the nineteenth century consisted of: the Smith Charities (est.1845) to support indigent women and children; the Havens Relief Fund (est. 1870) to relieve poverty; the John F. Slater (est. 1882) to support the education of Negroes; the Baron de Hirsch fund (est. 1890) to assist Jewish immigrants; and the John Edgar Thompson Foundation (est. 1882) to support the orphaned children of railway workers (Hollis, 1938). Each of these early foundations bore a few things in common, they were established through individual wealth or private funds, and each of them had a specific social goal. Harrison and Andrews suggest that among the early foundations, the Peabody Education Fund most resembles the modern private independent philanthropic foundation.

The very early years (1867–1900) of private independent foundations activities were documented primarily in historical phenomenon rather than focusing on higher education and foundations as the primary subject matter (see Anderson, 1988; Bulmer, 1995). Prior to foundation patronage , individual philanthropy routinely manifested in the field of higher education with individual wealthy benefactors making substantial gifts to institutions for their founding, revival, or expansion; this early philanthropic process was critical to the formation of American universities (Curti & Nash, 1965) but it was different functionally from foundations. The unique institutional form of a private independent foundation involves not only formal distinctive tax status, but a bureaucratized organizational structure with distinctive aims and ambitions focused on achieving a social impact through funding a sustained program over time.

Twentieth Century

It was during the early twentieth century that the giants of modern private philanthropy established foundations. The early mega-foundations were built on the fortunes of industrialists or ‘robber barons’ (depending on one’s world view, (Cascione, 2003; Clotfelter, 2007)), with John D. Rockefeller having made his fortune through Standard Oil and Andrew Carnegie from the steel industry, along with the fortunes of two other giants of industry the Russell Sage Foundation with funds derived from banking, and the Ford Foundation’s funds from Ford’s dominance in transportation (Curti & Nash, 1965; Hart, 1972; Slaughter & Silva, 1980). These individuals accrued their fortunes and social status as the elite of American society by extracting the maximum monetary value from the United States’ version of capitalism. Prewitt (2006) and others note that the wealth accumulated from their captains of industry was so vast that it was too grand to be dispensed in one’s lifetime and too much a burden to put on one’s family. Therefore, perpetual trusts for public purposes became a neat solution to resolve a prevailing social problem of that time, that public goods were “underproduced by free market transactions,” creating, “a social demand for public goods [e.g. social programs], and for their corollary, a public sector, thus arises” (Prewitt, 2006, p. 40).

With the major foundations formed, the stage was set for others to take hold. Hollis (1938) summarizes that there were about 22 foundations established in the U.S. prior to 1900. The Foundation Center reports that the establishment of independent foundations remained rather stable throughout the post-war era of the twentieth century, dropped off slightly in the 1970s, and then began to rise steadily through the close of the century, with an especially large spike in the late 1990s (Austin, 2007). Frumkin (2002) tracks Foundation Center data noting groups with $1 million in assets or capacity to award $100,000 or more, and observed 1,447 foundations before 1950, 6,906 before 1970, and more than 16,000 by the close of the 1990s. McGoey (2015) reports a contemporary surge in the formation of new private independent foundations in the U.S., with half of the existing groups emerging in the last 15 years, yielding about 85,000 groups. Upwards of 68,000 are private independent foundations, and the remainder are community, corporate or operating foundations (Foundation Center, 2011).

Legitimacy

The legitimacy of private foundations is built on their adherence to the promotion of the public good (Fleishman, 2007). Given the pluralistic context of U.S. society stemming from diverse values, preferences, beliefs, economic circumstances, religion, race or ethnicity, there is tremendous variation in what is deemed beneficial to the public. Effectively, in a pluralistic society, any public good argument is inherently contested (Calhoun, 1998; Chaves, 1998; Mainsbridge, 1998; Prewitt, 2006). Mainsbridge uses a historical philosophical analysis to showcase the manner in which the public good has had competing interpretations reaching back as far as Adam Smith, John Locke, and Plato. She underscores that there is little value in establishing a precise shared meaning for what is meant by the “public good,” but rather to acknowledge any use of the term public good invites both a “contest over what is public and good” (p. 17). She adds that the public tends to direct praise for actions that are taken on behalf of the public good as opposed to the promotion of private interest. Mainsbridge notes that the battle for the meaning of what constitutes the public good becomes exacerbated when “individuals and groups whose privileged social positions allow them to use … unequal deliberative resources to promote their opinions or interests” (p.17).

F. Emerson Andrews, one of the foremost scholars and practitioners in the field of American foundation philanthropy (Arnove, 1980a), has repeatedly described the essential characteristic of private foundations as the ir “wide freedom of action” (Andrews, 1950, 1956, 1958, 1961; Harrison & Andrews, 1946). Simon (1995) refers to this freedom as a function of having “no voters or customers, no alumni, students , parishioners, patients” (p. 245). The unique freedom that foundations possess makes them conceptually distinct from the state or the market, and as such, they are often referred to as the “third sector” of American democratic society (Horowitz & Horowitz, 1970; Roelofs, 2003).

Summary

The ways in which private foundation philanthropy has manifested in America is a unique reflection of the ways in which the nation’s collective conceptions of democracy and capitalism have come to intersect and shape U.S. society over the last 150 years. Private philanthropic foundations are born from individual wealthy donors. For a variety of reasons, individuals have decided to set their wealth aside for philanthropic purposes, often with grand visions for putting it to good use in society. With the American spirit of individualism and a desire to do something for others, prosperous individuals translated their wealth into a formal entity that was designed to serve as an extension of one’s beliefs, values, and preferences.

Foundations’ Agendas for Higher Education

While philanthropic foundations’ interests in education have been both a dominant theme and constant across time, Havighurst (1981) notes that foundations’ activities, while continually focused on the broad field of education, have been “related to changing social conditions and changing needs” (p.193). In his assessment, Hollis (1938) asserts that foundations have come to recognize “the university as the agency best suited to transmute funded wealth into cultural influence” (p. 25). Likewise, Bernstein (2003) contends that foundations view “higher education as the catalyst for new ideas and critical knowledge building, and for challenging societal structures in every aspect of human life” (p.34).

1900–1920s

Havighurst’s (1981) analysis demonstrates that in the early part of the twentieth century the largest foundations had social ambitions in education that coincided with the broadly agreed upon needs in society. For instance, from 1900–1920, their focus was turned towards creating an educational infrastructure for what was perceived as largely inadequate in many regions of the country. These efforts are what Kohler (1985) and Karl (1985) describe as foundations putting their institution building skills to work. The first two decades of the twentieth century often looked at education in a comprehensive manner so that efforts to improve primary and secondary education in the South especially were coordinated with initiatives to provide college level training for teachers or education professionals. This way an overall infrastructure was developed that included everything from school buildings and libraries, to colleges or normal schools, to scholarships and graduate training.

1930s–1950s

Roelofs (2003) describes the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s as a period where the social agenda of foundations was typically the “destruction of the apartheid system” (p.144) and to assist individuals that were generally disadvantaged in society. Bjork’s (1962) analysis of annual foundation reports indicated that education took on an increasingly important role in the minds of private foundations between 1930 and 1959; meaning that their grants awarded to educational institutions steadily increased. He goes on to note that the evidence was particularly poignant among the largest foundations (Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Sage) in the 1950s.

1960s–1990s

Into the 1960s there was a proliferation of social change oriented foundations, those that pursued activities that supported broad goals as civil rights, peace, and environmental change (Roelofs, 2003). Since this time, there has been less summation as to the nature of the social agendas of philanthropic foundations; with some exceptions being Havighurst’s (1981) observation that foundations’ agendas in the 1970s and 1980s supported life-long and professional educational initiatives. Fleishman (2007) remarks that a ground swell of foundations advocating conservative policies in education, welfare, immigration, and the environment began to emerge.

2000s–Present

Similar to the start of last century, an era of mega-foundations has emerged (Katz, 2012; McGoey, 2015). Notably, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is among the largest of the new private foundations because of not only the tremendous fortune of its namesake, but also due to the support of other mega-philanthropists like Warren Buffet who donated $30 billion to advance the Gates’ agenda (Katz, 2012; Osei-Kofi, 2010; Parry et al., 2013). Another newcomer to the mega-foundation arena is the Lumina Foundation (Katz, 2012; Lumina Foundation for Education, n.d.). It was not formed by an individual wealthy donor so its origins are a bit different from the other foundations discussed in this review; even so, it is among the largest actors in the realm of private independent foundation philanthropy directed towards higher education . Today’s foundations are distinctive from their historical predecessors in that they have shown a tendency to pursue parallel funding strategies, and are overt about enshrining their social aims and corresponding educational reform preferences into public policy and public opinion (Rogers, 2011; Saltman, 2009). While their higher education patronage is dispersed in conventional ways via supporting university initiatives or research directly, contemporary foundations characteristically fund a range of entities (think tanks , advocacy groups) and 504c organizations that engage in higher education -related work (college readiness programming, online or instructional technology initiatives) (Katz, 2012; Lubienski, Brewer, & La Laonde, 2016; Quinn, Tompkins-Stange, & Meyerson, 2014). Reckhow and Snyder (2014) document contemporary foundation funding patterns from 2000–2010; they observed an overall decrease in the amount of financial support donated to universities directly (as well as decreases in financial support to other traditional recipients such as public schools and state department of educations), and corresponding increases in foundation support directed to other types of the educational entities and advocacy groups. Mega-foundations funding strategies are pursued to build support for the policy and structural changes that the funders see as desirable for the field of higher education , and the ways that postsecondary education functions in society and universities operate. Specifically, these social aims are succinctly characterized by Katz (2012) noting that they seek to reform the curriculum to encourage a ‘school-to-work’ vision that emphasizes the instrumental utility of college in readying degree holders to support business-identified needs and functions. The school-to-work aim leads funders to encourage college completion for individual students , and as a matter of political accountability. Through the funders’ views, degree completion fosters job-placement, which contributes to economic stability and mobility.

Foundation-Types

Roelofs’ (2003) analysis succinctly labels what foundation scholars have reiterated in their work, indicating that foundations may be “roughly classified as liberal, conservative, or “alternative;” (p. 20) noting however, that typically foundations labeled as liberal are following a progressive agenda. The liberal foundations are regarded as: MacArthur, Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Twentieth Century; and the conservative foundations are: Olin, Smith Richardson, Scaife, Murdock, and Bradley (Fleishman, 2007).

Appendix A provides a summary of foundations involved in higher education and their corresponding social agenda orientation. These classifications are based on the reviewed literature and suffice as a snapshot of the scholarly consensus about particular foundations and their approach and aims for higher education . Building on Roelofs (2003) categories, the foundations’ social agendas are labeled as: progressive, referring to foundations with liberal, Left, or reformist agendas; conservative, referring to foundations possessing values that are politically Right leaning or are inclined to advocate for the status quo; and radical, referring to foundations which possess extreme Leftist views on the social and political spectrum and tend to advocate for radical social change. In Table 5.2, there is a scarcity of radical Left foundations; Roelofs proposes that this is because “the very format conflicts with radical concepts of democracy” (p. 20). The fourth classification is labeled as a neoliberal strategic agenda, which is not part of Roelofs’ typology. This set of foundations (and their corresponding activities) seek to apply economic and market-oriented principles to reform the field of higher education , and these aims are pursued through a multifaceted organizational strategy involving educational programs, policy -action and advocacy, and the cultivation of public support for their aims (Boyce, 2013; Quinn et al., 2014; Rogers, 2014).

Table 5.2 Conservative think tanks and external knowledge production organizations

Progressive Foundations

The vast majority of progressive foundations formed during the Progressive era (1890s–1920s), and possessed the communitarian and service ideals that were fairly typical of that time (Kohler, 1985). The dominant thinking of the Progressive era, had direct ties to the practice of higher education in the sense that there were commonly held ideas about the relationship between science and social ills. The progressive vision pursued by foundations worked to offer “concrete solutions to visible ills” (McCarthy, 1985, p. 4) and “a bias toward science and social action” (p. 5). Their work has come to be known as scientific philanthropy (Saltman, 2009). Fisher (1983) described progressive foundation sentiments as “an almost religious faith in the capacity of sound knowledge to solve the social and material problems that the world faced” (p.223). These overall values regarding the role of science in society translated into a foundation imperative to involve itself directly in the research endeavor, from institution building, individual grant-making, and solidifying the research as a precursor to governmental policy making (Karl, 1985; Kohler, 1985; McCarthy, 1985). Kohler remarks that foundations’ had interests in “investing in the careers of young persons who would create future elites of science, imbued with a sense of the cultural and economic roles of science in society” (p. 10). McCarthy summarized that the prevailing view of the progressive era philanthropists was:

To base their programs on research, flexibility, a working partnership with professionals, and a commitment to fundamental social change. In effect the Progressive dictum argued that philanthropy should strike at the root cause of social ills, test programs, turn the most successful over to government, and move on to fresh fields. (p.3)

Progressive ideals and social agendas had a vision of society that strove for both efficiency and for fairness. Jenkins (1987) argues that their preference for efficiency and practical solutions pushed some progressive organizations toward solutions that emphasized accountability measures, stressing “open access rules, freedom of information, clarity of legal standards, and judicial review” (p.310).

Conservative Foundations

Wolpert’s (2006) analysis indicates that conservative foundations formed after the 1960s, largely as a reaction to liberal agendas of the large powerful progressive foundations . The conservative foundations are associated with neoconservative social views, also called Right or the New Right. The social agenda that conservative foundations espouse includes a preference for laissez-faire economics, decreased social spending, limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, strict moral standards (which emphasize religious morality), and a view that individual self-help and market solutions are essential for alleviating social problems (Jenkins, 1987; Moses, 2004; Wolpert, 2006). Additionally, the conservative social agenda views charities and foundations as better positioned to provide for social welfare since poverty and other social problems are essentially the primary responsibility of the individual, not society’s and by extension also not that state’s (Faber & McCarthy, 2005; Moses, 2004). There is also a view that anything remotely resembling collectivism is detrimental to the preferred conservative vision for society. Further, one of the major tenets of conservatism is motivated by stifling or eliminating progressive or liberal social views. A conservative agenda holds that government and intellectuals are the primary sources of liberal social change in society, thus it is necessary to construct a ‘counterintellectual network’ as a compensatory strategy for asserting the conservative vision of society (Himmelstein & Zald, 1984). Fleishman (2007) observed this phenomenon in practice, noting that liberal and progressive foundation activities were a “major factor in energizing activism by donors to conservative foundations ” (p. 43).

Radical Reform Foundations

Radical foundations are squarely focused on changing social institutions so that they don’t continue to reproduce the problems that the foundations seek to alleviate (Bothwell, 2003; Faber & McCarthy, 2005; Rabinowitz, 1990). The radical reform agenda presumes that mass civic participation, grassroots organizing, and democratic base-building are the keys to realizing their social vision of a more just and equitable society, where environmental, racial, and social justice exists, and communities and neighborhoods work collaboratively to ensure that wealth doesn’t dominate or dictate the opportunity and circumstances of various classes of people (Faber & McCarthy, 2005). Radical change oriented foundations aspire to create a society that is fair regardless of health, minority status, or class; and by extension civil liberties are a top concern (Rabinowitz, 1990). Radical foundations generally do not engage in deciding or defining the problems of a community, but rather they ask the community to determine the issues, and the foundation responds with funding and advocacy for these needs (Faber & McCarthy, 2005).

Often times radical and social change philanthropy emerges from community based funds rather than foundations, since community funds are more likely to engender local grassroots involvement of direct beneficiaries (Faber & McCarthy, 2005). Nevertheless, a handful of foundations have been evaluated as having possessed radical social agendas (Beilke, 1997; Jenkins & Halcli, 1999; Ostrander, 1999, 2005; Rabinowitz, 1990). It is important to note that radical social agendas must be considered relative to the historical context in which the funds were making grants; as radical conceptions of social justice are dependent on the relative dominant cultural interpretations of social issues prevalent at any given moment in time.

Neoliberal Strategic Foundations

The past decade of scholarly writing on private foundations ’ activities has emphasized the current scale of philanthropic resources being infused throughout the field of higher education to activate and unify an agenda supported by several foundations (Bosworth, 2011; Rogers, 2011). The basis of the neoliberal strategic social agenda is to apply venture capital principles to overcome social problems (Bishop & Green, 2015; Edwards, 2011). The funders have faith that their approach is suitable for educational reform, in part because it has yielded business success , and was a large factor in creating tremendous wealth during the 1990’s technology boom (Saltman, 2009). Quinn et al. (2014) synthesize this form of philanthropy in education as consisting of both an aim and an approach – both of which reinforce one another, where the funder treats the gift as an investment “utilizing corporate management practices, holding grantees accountable to specific outcomes, and pursuing rapid growth and scale in order to produce higher return on investment” (p.963). The aim is to reform education in a manner that more closely resembles a market that caters to the funders’ preferences and the corresponding organizational performance metrics they deem appropriate, legitimate, or worthy (Rogers, 2011). This problem-based funding approach, with its tightly coupled performance metrics, has been observed to produce an outcome where “funders’ values were directly instantiated into the organizational structures” (Quinn et al., 2014, p. 963).

While variations exists in the philosophical social values of the neoliberal strategic foundations, with funders’ dispositions differentially aligning with conservative or liberal perspectives on matters of religion, social justice, sexual health, or social identity, their views are somewhat secondary to the corporate, venture, investment capital grant-making approach where funders: (a) specify the terms of performance and increasingly the means of production (how organizational performance will be pursued via particular curricula or lines of research), (b) exercise influence over policy makers that regulate higher education organizations, and (c) build public support (or market share) for the funders’ approach to higher education to eliminate the public’s preferences for alternate reform initiatives (Gose, 2013). Often the terms ‘philanthro-capitalism ’ (Bishop & Green, 2015) or ‘philanthro-policy making’ (Rogers, 2011) are used to describe this sort of foundation work. The undergirding neoliberal economic principle is that philanthropic investment can be used to redirect how other sources of funding are spent on education (Rogers, 2015a). Under the neoliberal strategic agenda, the logic is that private philanthropic investment can incentivize how other monies, particularly public tax dollars, are spent (Reckhow & Snyder, 2014; Saltman, 2009). As such the neoliberal strategic philanthropic approach aims to use gift matching or conditional giving to steer its objectives, such that the public (state and federal) appropriations dedicated to colleges and universities and the internal budgets of universities and colleges are distributed in ways that meet funders’ preferred academic degree programs, faculty , research foci, curricular content (including topics and texts) and pedagogical style (often online).

Summary

The label of ‘foundation,’ often inspires public confidence in the organization. For much of the lay public, the idea that foundations are a social institution that have secured tax-exempt status based on the premise that they are engaged in good works that benefit the public or society is enough of a reason to believe they are neutral benevolent organizations. There are benefits to perpetuate a perception of benevolence, the chief among them being that the appearance of neutrality masks the often contested nature of the agenda, cause, or approach that a foundation is promoting. Neutrality can be a good defense for scrutiny in a contested political environment. There is a clear line of scholarly critique arguing that foundations are incapable of being neutral since they are, fundamentally, a protective layer for capitalism (Arnove, 1980a, b; Fisher, 1980, 1983, 1984; Fleishman, 2007; McGoey, 2015; Osei-Kofi, 2010; Roelofs, 2003). Despite this criticism, the fortunes of foundations align with social visions that inspire and motivate grant-making.

Evidence of Social Agendas and Field-Level Effects in Higher Education

The interventions foundations utilized to assert their social agendas in the field of higher education are described as being implemented via direct or indirect means; these pathways are represented in Fig. 5.2. The dashed lines from the foundation box depict an indirect path, with higher education being shaped on account of foundations funding another sector positioned in the field. An example of indirect funding might include a foundation funding another non-profit research organization or educational advocacy group outside the academy as a means of influencing the field of higher education . The solid line from the foundation box to the higher education sector depicts a direct funding strategy where foundation money is provided directly to institutions, or to individuals such as students or faculty .

Fig. 5.2

The field of higher education with direct and indirect paths

Based on the notable lack of comprehensive research about private foundations ’ (Bachetti, 2007; Parry et al., 2013; Rogers, 2015b) efforts in higher education , the discourse and scholarly analysis is a bit skewed, emphasizing the role of the largest and progressive foundations perhaps at the expense of smaller, conservative, or less well-investigated foundations. It is also important to note that while the references associated with a particular foundation (see Appendix A) specify a foundation’s particular social view, only a portion of the references provide sufficient evidence to explicate the relationship between said agenda and the field of higher education . Further, foundation self-published reports were excluded from the review.

Foundations with Progressive Social Agendas Acting in Higher Education

Agenda: Creating a System of Higher Education Free from External Controls

Progressive foundations sought to use their funds to build and institutionalize more efficient and carefully planned structures across the field of higher education . These manifested in the form of supporting the establishment of university endowments, faculty pension programs, working to refine student admissions and accrediting criteria, and formalizing university business practices. These particular approaches were aimed to create a system of higher education free from external controls, or as Clotfelter (2007) describes “strengthening institutions as they are” (p.224).

Endowments

Foundations desired that higher education acquire resources to meet the challenge of inevitable expansion (Hollis, 1938). As a result, Rockefeller’s General Education Board, the Carnegie Corporation, and other likeminded foundations made conditioned endowment gifts to universities. These gifts were a direct effort to transform the structure of universities towards a more stable financial model that could support growth. Typically, foundations required that institutions match the foundation’s endowment gifts (Hollis, 1938), an approach that helped to stretch foundation dollars and influence across a larger array of institutions and provide for system-wide stability. From 1902–1925, the General Education Board provided 291 colleges with over $60 million in endowment funds (Andrews, 1950; Flexner, 1952; Hollis, 1938). Other foundations experimented with large gifts to single institutions but these were seen as costly and not well suited for creating the type of influence in higher education that the foundations hoped to achieve (Hollis, 1938). Moreover, the strategy of granting funds widely (partial funds to many institutions) versus deeply (complete funding to single institutions) became a prominent tactic in spreading a foundation’s influence across the broadest scope of higher education institutions. These early endowment gifts functioned to instill a cultural norm and precedent that universities adopt a position of deference to foundations and follow their directives when large gifts are involved (Hollis, 1938).

Pensions

Similarly, the Carnegie Foundation desired to create “a system of superior colleges which owed no measure of allegiance to any other external control” (Hollis, 1938, p. 38). Carnegie and other progressive foundations felt that higher education was disorganized and chaotic due to the influence of religion and state governments, which had functioned as the primary sponsors of higher education up until the start of the twentieth century (Hollis, 1938). As a result, Carnegie used its direct influence to structure the administrative practices and behaviors of higher education by creating a faculty pension program with institutional requirements for participation; such that: (1) colleges require 4 years of courses dispersed across six different departments and later increased to eight departments, (2) department professors possess earned doctorates, (3) college admission be granted only to secondary students with fourteen units of school work, which was later increased to sixteen units, (4) private colleges possess an endowment of $200,000 (which was raised to $500,000 after 1921), and (5) colleges disavow themselves from sectarian or denominational affiliation (Andrews, 1950; Condliffe Lagemann, 1983; Hechinger, 1967; Hollis, 1938). The program had the effect of institutionalizing the practice of colleges possessing endowments, restricting the role of denominational influence in U.S. higher education , and elevating the professionalized status of college teachers and faculty . Culturally, the pension program built on the idea of conditional giving that was popularized through endowment gifts, and reinforced the idea of complying with foundations’ directives.

Admissions and Accrediting

The Carnegie Foundation longed for a U.S. college preparatory experience that generated more similarity in the academic qualifications of entering students (Condliffe Lagemann, 1983; Hechinger, 1967; Hollis, 1938). Therefore, in 1908 Carnegie set up the College Entrance Examination Board, and established the ‘Carnegie unit’ as the measure for evaluating high school work (Condliffe Lagemann, 1983; Hechinger, 1967; Hollis, 1938; Roelofs, 2003). These efforts unified the criteria that various accrediting bodies used to classify secondary, college, and university work (Anderson, 1980), and unintentionally became a de facto criteria for high school accrediting associations (Hollis, 1938; Roelofs, 2003). Weischadle (1980) notes that “the acceptance of the Carnegie Unit represented the initial test of power of a philanthropic trust to employ its financial resources and prominent personnel to bring about educational change” (p. 365). Weischadle argues that Carnegie’s approach introduced the model of foundations using interlocking networks of people and organizations to achieve something more extensive than any one group could achieve alone.

Business Practices

In 1910, the Carnegie Foundation published a report outlining the inadequacies of college accounting practices, as a response to its concerns over the practice of borrowing from permanent endowment funds to pay for pressing debts (Hollis, 1938). Responding to the Carnegie report, the General Education Board published College and University Finance and distributed it to 5,000 higher education administrators. Subsequently, the General Education Board convened a conference of college business officers and provided funds to establish, the National Committee on Standard Reports for Institutions of Higher Education. This association created standardized practices which were adopted by 200 institutions and served as the basis for state and federal reporting. The efforts to shape business practices helped to stabilize higher education financially from the inside out.

Agenda: Believing in Education and Research to Solve Major Social Issues

Progressive foundations viewed scientific analysis and systematic research as instruments for solving social problems (Douglas, 1987; Fisher, 1980; Flexner, 1952). Initially, foundations used these views to address noncontroversial areas such as medicine (Nielsen, 1972) and farming education (Nally & Taylor, 2015), but turned toward social science problems as well (Hollis, 1938). These efforts focused on internal support of existing university structures as well as the creation of entities that supported research and scientific analysis by surpassing conventional university departments or structures to create both new entities and independent research-oriented bodies (Clotfelter, 2007).

Medical Education Reform to Improve Health

The Rockefeller foundation established a partner foundation, the General Education Board, in 1902 in response to its concerns about the state of the U.S. economy and the strong presence of poverty and unemployment (Douglas, 1987). The Board viewed education as a tool in society to promote human progress by embracing objectivity so that the underlying causes of social problems could be identified, isolated, and addressed (Flexner, 1952); an approach very much akin to the prevailing ideas about germ theory that were developed in medicine at the close of the nineteenth century (Hinsey, 1967).

The General Education Board’s top priority was addressing deficiencies in medical training, and thus became the catalyst responsible for transforming American medical education into the present-day model that exists (Havighurst, 1981; Katz, 1985; Laprade, 1952/1953). The reforms initiated by the Board were a direct “challenge to the established system of proprietary or ‘free-enterprise’ medical schools” (Havighurst, p. 202). The impetus for the changes were derived from a report, generated from a comprehensive survey of medical education in the U.S. and Canada, commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching’s (Condliffe Lagemann, 2000; Flexner, 1910; Hinsey, 1967). This report (Flexner, 1910) scrutinized American medical schools and demonstrated that they were in fact operating as diploma mills unaffiliated with established universities and without academic responsibility; and advised that nearly 80 % of them be discontinued (Hechinger, 1967; Hinsey). The Board provided grants for facilities, endowments, money for clinical faculty , formalized tight partnerships between universities and teaching hospitals, and insisted upon a standard curriculum and training protocol for educating physicians. These efforts were implemented at flagship universities and other prestigious institutions in geographically dispersed areas to achieve maximum influence (Hinsey, 1967; Hollis, 1938).

The direct strategy to influence the structure and practice of medical preparation on the part of Carnegie and the General Education Board institutionalized the contemporary model of medical training used in higher education . These structural changes transformed healthcare in fundamental ways, relying on the belief that when physician preparation, research, and practice are integrated into a seamless system, it can improve the quality of both medical delivery and knowledge. By using a strategy where prestigious institutions were the primary beneficiaries of the grant monies, the General Education Board set the stage for emulation by other institutions that hoped to acquire the same status as the top tier medical schools.

The relative success of the Carnegie report, along with the General Education Board’s translation of it into action, “provided demonstrable support for an argument for standards in other professions” (Condliffe Lagemann, 1983, p. 74). This approach paved the way for the practice of foundations surveying professions to increase professionalization, and to foster the standardization of university curricula in fields such as law, engineering, forestry, architecture, dentistry, foreign languages, music, and teaching (Condliffe Lagemann, 1983, 2000; Hollis, 1938). With these activities and the relative success of the changes, foundation assessment and intervention became culturally acceptable as a normal practice in reforming higher education .

Social Work Schooling to Foster Intervention on Domestic Problems

The Russell Sage Foundation believed that poverty, crime, and disease were deficiencies of individual character that required intervention and treatment by experts (Roelofs, 2005; Slaughter & Silva, 1980). Therefore, Sage instituted a direct structural strategy to craft an infrastructure that supported both the training and profession of social work by funding research, university programs, professional organizations, publications , and a national social work employment bureau (Karl & Karl, 2001; Roelofs, 2005; Slaughter & Silva, 1980). The foundation made grants to professional schools in Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, and New York to disseminate its plan widely. Sage also invested substantial resources into survey projects and statistical procedures to supply the content for its publications (Condliffe Lagemann, 2000; Slaughter & Silva, 1980).

Slaughter and Silva (1980) noted that Sage’s grant making solidified the major trends in social work curriculum and training, specifically the case work theory and method, and the idea of mobilizing ‘responsible’ citizens in the community to mitigate urban problems. Further, Sage’s very intentional efforts of using survey methodology for understanding social science research problems, stabilized the technique as the principal (and taken-for-granted) method for conducting social science research and reinforced an individualized view of problems to the exclusion of other cultural explanations (Slaughter & Silva, 1980).

International Education to Promote American Values and Peace

Brooks’ (2015) comprehensive synthesis describe the Ford and Carnegie foundations purposeful funding of international education in the period surrounding World War II, with similar precipitating efforts by Rockefeller money (Laprade, 1952/1953). Their social aim was to export American forms of scientific research, democracy and governing, values and philosophies, economic approaches as a counter to global fears about communism and systems of global governance and thought that brought about the atom bomb (Brooks, 2015; Nally & Taylor, 2015). The theory of action relative to international education and exchange was to ‘properly’ (e.g. American) educate and train individuals such that they would then be ready to occupy positions of leadership and influence in global politics and economics; their moral and scientific dispositions would therefore cultivate peace and potentially reorder the global political landscape. In the 1930s, Bu (1999) reports that Rockefeller provided scholarships and fellowships for one-third of all the foreign students and scholars that the relatively new International Institute of Education (IIE) sponsored. This approach resulted in dedicating $270 million in direct funding in 1950 to international studies programs/curricula at 34 universities. Structurally it embedded and stabilized international educational exchange, and culturally situated universities as arenas to use curriculum to promote awareness of individual and societal differences.

Coordinating Bodies to Promote Research Use in Governing

Progressive era foundations concentrated their funds in a network of quasi-public institutions to provide expertise, research, and advice for government agencies (Culleton Colwell, 1980; O’Connor, 1999). The focus of these external entities has been directly tied to foundations’ prevailing views about the role of social science in society (Karl, 1985). In the early twentieth century progressive foundations strategically positioned themselves “as alternatives to government intervention” (Karl, p. 14), where “social science research, adequately funded from private sources could meet the needs of government for an effective system of designing the social programs required by an industrial society” (p. 15), and thus created coordinating groups such as: the Social Science Research Council and the National Bureau of Economic Research; and think tanks like, the Brookings Institution, and the Odum Institute at Chapel Hill (Hammack, 2006; Laprade, 1952/1953; Roelofs, 2003).⁴ The establishment of these external knowledge coordinating bodies was an indirect route to influence the field of higher education to ultimately shape government. Foundations labeled these external organizations with neutral sounding names, and then channeled their funding toward research projects that “would ultimately provide government with basic research for policy programs” (Karl, 1985, p. 16). The foundations’ intentions appear to have had some influence based on evidence that the Pierce, Hoover, Roosevelt (F.D.R.), and Eisenhower administrations all relied heavily on these external research institutions for direction in social policy making (Karl).

Agenda: Supporting and Assisting Socially Disadvantaged Groups

Aid to the South

The Peabody Education Fund was created to aid the poor in the stricken South following the civil war (West, 1966). Although the Fund’s work was mostly related to primary and secondary education, its financing provided for the creation of state departments of education for all of the southern states, which came to oversee higher education (Flexner, 1952). Regarding higher education more specifically, the Fund directly established a normal school in Tennessee and provided college scholarships for southern individuals (Flexner, 1952). This strategy generated a cadre of professionally trained teachers to support a system of lower-level compulsory education. Flexner regards the Peabody Fund as monumental because it advocated for “the education of Negroes by the whites” (p. 17), exemplified in its withholding of funds to schools in 1883 that exercised discriminatory funding practices (Flexner, 1952). The Fund’s efforts aided Blacks in the south structurally; and culturally it created a precedent for foundations involving themselves in issues of race and higher education .

Child Development

The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial fund (LSRM) was concerned about the social welfare of children, and held concerns that a tendency existed to provide only ameliorative relief rather than accumulate knowledge about children so that they could grow to be healthy well-adjusted adults. Grant (1999) argues that LSRM’s interest was inspired by the childward movement following World War I. By the 1930s, LSRM focused on basic research and provided funds and direction for all of the major centers of child research in Iowa, Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, and California (Grant). In an effort to structure and stabilize the child-development discipline, LSRM funded a professional society, scholarly journals and popular publications , and grants and fellowships to graduate students (Grant, 1999). LSRM intervened directly into the field of higher education , by driving the academic adoption of ideas of the child welfare movement that emerged from the broader political environment. The fund’s actions not only structured and fostered the child development academic area, but it established a cultural precedent for foundations channeling movement aims to legitimate academic endeavors.

Women’s Studies

The Ford Foundation supported and directed the development of an infrastructure that institutionalized women’s studies in the academy (McCarthy, 1985; Proietto, 1999; Rojas, 2003). From 1972–1975, Ford funded individual scholarships for faculty and graduate students which served two functions: (1) it allotted legitimacy to feminism as an acceptable area of academic inquiry; and (2) through the grant application process, it gave the Ford foundation a portrait of the emerging women’s studies ideas (Proietto, 1999). By 1974, Ford directed its attention to the institutional dimension of the women’s studies field by providing funding to establish the first Center for Research on Women at Stanford University, and subsequently funding fifteen more centers well into the 1990s. Ford also institutionalized the discipline by: funding the first journal in the field, Signs, which formally linked individual scholarship; providing money to establish the National Women’s Studies Association, which linked academic programs; and funding the National Council for Research on Women, which linked research centers (Proietto, 1999; Roelofs, 2003). Ford also backed the creation of a curriculum integration effort that was designed to assist universities in bringing “feminist scholarship into university-wide curriculum ” (Proietto, 1999, p. 271).

While Ford funded 16 centers, 621 women’s studies programs were established between 1970–1990 with the help of other likeminded foundations (McCarthy, 1985; Proietto, 1999). Proietto argues that the prevalence and diffusion of women’s studies in American universities was an educational extension of the feminist/ women’s movement. Ford’s direct intervention in the movement allowed the scholarly wing of it to acquire “the institutional accoutrements of paraphernalia of institutional success … [and] to act more on behalf of its institutional constituency and less on behalf of its earlier version of a broad societal transformation” (Proietto, 1999, p. 279). Additionally, Ford’s involvement emerged as an early exemplar of foundations interceding on contentious social movement issues by supporting an academic infrastructure with an external networked knowledge structure of professional associations, publications , and research centers to round out the intellectual apparatus.

Agenda: Remedying the Problems of Race Relations in the U.S.

Opportunity to Underrepresented Individuals

In the 1950s, the Ford Foundation became increasingly focused on providing equal access to education as a means of alleviating poverty and advancing the well-being of African Americans (Raynor, 1999). Therefore, it established the Fund for the Advancement of Education (FAE) in 1952, a foundation endowed with $50 million of Ford money (Raynor, 1999). FAE distributed scholarships to African American students based on their potential to engage in public service and community organizing (Hechinger, 1967; Raynor, 1999). Building on FAE’s work, Rockefeller also funded summer programs for promising Black high school students at ivy league and other top tier institutions to prepare them for successful college admission (Hechinger, 1967). The legacy and continuance of this aim evolved such that in the years leading up to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act Ford and Rockefeller foundations established 4-year scholarships to attract the most academically gifted African American students for the purpose of attending predominantly White institutions to foster opportunity and to better racially integrate higher education (Rogers, 2012).

FAE and Ford’s involvement directly aided students that were socially disadvantaged. These efforts were construed as questionable as evidenced by a Congressional inquiry to formally critique both the appropriateness and potential legality of this type of foundation conduct (Raynor, 1999). Furthermore, the Congressional response stood as a prominent example of a legal test which questioned the legitimacy of organizational attempts to intervene directly into an unequal social structure.

Access and Equity

In 1944, the Carnegie Corporation funded the Myrdal Study which prompted a “cottage industry of academic research on race relations … to explore the social, psychological, and moral implications of race relations in America” (Raynor, 1999, p. 198). This research was ultimately used to overturn the legality of segregation in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 (Raynor, 1999). Carnegie’s involvement has been described as an “instance of a direct attempt by a large foundation to awaken Americans to the evils of discrimination” (Rhind & Bingham, 1967, p. 433). In addition to the direct funding on race relations research, foundations funded activist organizations such as the NAACP and Education Fund (a group which advocated for the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Urban League in a larger effort to advance the cause of civil rights and access to higher education .

Black Studies

Rojas’ (2003) analysis of the Ford Foundation demonstrated that it wanted to become more political, pursue social activism, and work on race relations on a grand scale. Ford was willing to pursue controversial ideas if they were “academically legitimate and … an extension of previous work” (Rojas, 2003, p. 72). Therefore, in1966 Ford moved towards funding Black studies. Ford’s involvement in Black studies resembled its approach to women’s studies with direct structural support for academic programs, conferences, research institutes, scholars/students , and academic journals (Rojas, 2003). Also, Ford sponsored programs at elite research universities and historically black colleges to aid with the diffusion and institutionalization of the discipline (Rogers, 2012). Despite the Black studies effort having ties to Ford’s desire for social activism, its grants excluded scholars and programs that promoted Black nationalism, in lieu of promoting an interdisciplinary approach built from existing academic disciplines (Rojas, 2003).

Legal Education

In 1957, the Ford Foundation began funding professional development opportunities for legal students in an effort to develop a cadre of lawyers well versed in advocating for the rights of disadvantaged groups like women, minorities, consumers, etc. (Roelofs, 2005). This strategy was based on the general progressive sentiment that the way to influencing what was perceived as a conservative judiciary was to influence law school training. Tangibly, Ford supported the direct creation of several “rights”-oriented campus-based law centers at Columbia Law School, Georgetown, and the University of Chicago, and corresponding law journals, including: Law and Society, Race Relations Law Reporter, Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, and Harvard Civil Rights- Civil Liberties Law Review (Roelofs, 2005). The overall tactic was that of a pipeline approach to progressive ideology. Funding an infrastructure that served to influence legal training, recruitment, publication , and research was intended to culminate in a meta-effect on the judiciary and public policy , to ensure a progressive stance on the rights of the disadvantaged (Roelofs, 2005). Structurally, Ford helped institute the academic apparatus to support legal expertise on rights based issues. Culturally, Ford’s involvement helped solidify the appropriateness of foundations and the legal academic apparatus as partners for pursuing the public’s interest. In combination these structural and cultural influences worked to shape the legal environment that informed legal judgments.

Foundations with Conservative Social Agendas Acting in Higher Education

Conservative private philanthropic foundations increased in number and activity following a number of years where foundations with progressive foundations operated largely alone (Lenkowsky & Piereson, 2007). Given that progressive foundations were largely responsible for facilitating the development of a great deal of the structural apparatus of higher education (endowments, pensions, business practices, structuring the disciplines, reforming academic programs), conservative foundations in the later-half of the century used their patronage to modify the existing structure and culture of the institutional terrain towards a vision that was more consistent with their ideas and visions for society and higher education .

Agenda: Believing in Ideas and Research to Solve the Problem of Liberal Bias

In order for conservative foundations to promote their social agendas and preferences, they have repeatedly relied on a structural approach to supplement the primary knowledge production apparatus. Building on the early efforts of the progressive foundations to construct an external knowledge apparatus with coordinating bodies of interlocked networks of likeminded people and organizations (research councils, think tanks , professional associations, etc.), conservative foundations expanded this idea in a manner that suited their aims.

External Think Tanks

When authors describe the influence of the conservative movement on higher education , the overwhelmingly common example is the proliferation of think tanks since the 1960s that espouse conservative ideologies and policies (Alterman, 1999; Blackburn, 1995; Cole & Reid, 1986; Covington, 2005; Cross, 1999; Denvir, 2003; Lee, 1994; Lenkowsky & Piereson, 2007; Lincoln & Cannella, 2004; McClennen, 2006; Meranto, 2005; Messer-Davidow, 1993; People For the American Way, 1996; Reindl, 2006; Selden, 2005; Starobin, 1996; Stefancic & Delgado, 1996); see Table 5.2 for a listing of the conservative think tanks that are typically listed among these examples. Cole and Reid (1986) conclude that the conservative agenda is to develop an alternative system of research and idea generation that will replace and destroy the ‘intellectual superstructure’ of the academy with a new knowledge framework that is dedicated to conservative ideology and the promotion of free market capitalism. This agenda is based on the premise that ideas shape mass opinion and preferences, and to create broad scale adoption of conservative ideals for society, conservative ideas must achieve both legitimacy and dominance in the marketplace of ideas (Cole & Reid, 1986). This strategy of conservative idea cultivation is enacted by developing and sustaining think tanks that conduct research and policy analysis, support educational programs, retain scholars, and generate publishable material. Blackburn’s (1995) observation suggests that conservative think tanks have become:

Home to nonteaching professors and shadow cabinet ministers hired to spread a patina of academeese and expertise over the views of their sponsors … Rather than endow chairs at universities where teaching is done and peer review is practiced … big-givers find it more cost-effective to endow ‘fellows’ and ‘resident scholars’ at places like Heritage. They churn out forests of papers, report and newsletters, cross-citing one another, and mail them to legislators, opinion molders and, for a small charge, amateur political junkies and the more literate members of the militia movement. (p. 18)

Essentially, conservative foundations possessing an agenda to overcome what they see as dominance of liberal expertise in academe have approached their goals by developing a structure of think tanks that stands in relative parallel to the role of knowledge production and dissemination in the academy, only without the accountability of peer review (Messer-Davidow, 1993). Culturally, think tanks have gained legitimacy as evidenced by the policy making community’s willingness to treat their advice and advocacy as acceptable and valid, despite it emerging from a knowledge production process that is outside higher education (Messer-Davidow, 1993). Structurally, Messer-Davidow regards the conservative think tank apparatus as successfully creating “competition among ‘scientific’ knowledges … likely to be readily consumed by policymakers and other publics without much critical analysis to differentiate them” (p.54). Moreover, conservative efforts to shape the external knowledge production process has had lasting implications for what constitutes legitimate knowledge currency, and has direct implications for the function and role of higher education in society (Lincoln & Cannella, 2004).

Internal Research Centers and Programs

Aside from contributing to knowledge production activities that are external to the academy, conservative foundations provide grants to promote their views within the academy (Covington, 2005; People For the American Way, 1996). Building on the norm that progressive foundation established of targeting elite institutions to ensure maximum diffusion, conservative funding has been concentrated in places like Harvard, Yale, the University of Virginia, Johns Hopkins, New York University, Cornell, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT (Covington, 1997; People For the American Way, 1996).

Typically, funding is directed to law, economics, history, political science, or public policy programs (Covington, 2005; Fiore, 1997; McMillen, 1992).

Of all the conservative foundation funded academic programs, the combined study of law and economics emerged in the early 1990s and has since achieved great popularity among a host of conservative foundations (Covington, 1997). Foundation grants came with direct provisions for programs to focus their studies on the legal aspects of free-market capitalism (Covington, 1997). Foundations desired these programs because they generated scholarship, research, and publications that conveyed a favorable view of business in the legal system, and promoted foundations’ accompanying market-views of the social world (Covington, 1997). The Olin Center at University of Chicago, and the Law and Economics Program Center at George Mason University, have stood out among conservative funders as models to emulate (Bernstein, 2005; Covington, 2005; Fiore, 1997; McMillen, 1992; University of Chicago, 2000). While foundations have regularly invested in university programs at conservative schools like Boston College, Hillsdale College, and Claremont McKenna College, Covington’s analysis indicates that conservative foundation funding has diffused widely throughout higher education , noting that 145 academic institutions received over $88.9 million dollars in funding between 1992–1994 to support conservative academic programs and research.

Underrepresented Scholars

Stemming from the belief that there is profound liberal bias in academe, foundations perceive individual grant-making as a way of increasing ideological diversity , namely inserting and breeding conservative views (Covington, 2005). Conservative foundations apportion their money to graduate students and fellowship programs designed with the express purpose of fostering “the next generation of conservative scholars, journalists, government employees, legislators and activists” (Messer-Davidow, 1993; People For the American Way, 1996, p. 12). The combination of conservative oriented programs, research centers, and individual grants, have come to serve as a pipeline for conservative ideological diffusion in society (Messer-Davidow, 1993). This practice is very similar to the progressive approach that was instituted in rights-based legal education. The newly minted PhDs from the conservative programs acquire all the legitimate academic credentialing from established and often elite colleges and universities, and come well prepared to staff the external knowledge organizations and think tanks , or seek appointments within the academy to further the line of conservative scholarship (Starobin, 1996).

Conservative foundations have used their resources to imitate the existing higher education knowledge production structure by directly funding university research centers with missions and funding individual scholars/students that correspond to conservative views of the world. This approach combined with the external think tanks has seemingly produced a very extensive collection of well-funded sources for expertise that government and the market can draw from. By virtue of conservative programs and research centers being located within higher education , the conservative ideas generated there can piggy back on the underlying principle of academic objectivity that has traditionally been associated with university research. Imitating the long established tactic of foundations supporting university research and corresponding avenues for publication , lends these conservative programs a great deal of cultural legitimacy.

Agenda: Structuring Higher Education so that it Embodies Conservative Views

Other than think tanks serving as the dominant example of conservative foundations ’ attempts to overcome liberal bias in higher education , a litany of conservative books (see: Bloom, 1987; Cheney, 1992; D’Souza, 1991, 1995; Kimball, 1990) are regularly held up as the intellectual backbone of conservative thinking with regard to higher education (Alterman, 1999; Messer-Davidow, 1993). These books have functioned to make the case that the structure and norms of the higher education experience have been insufficiently diverse due to the hegemonic dominance of liberal ideas, practices, and policies (Alterman, 1999). For example, the book Telling the Truth: A Report on the State of Humanities in Higher Education (Cheney, 1992) outlined an argument which claimed that the liberal arts curriculum had been usurped by radical feminists and Marxist faculty who were using the classroom to promote their political messages and thus subversively threatening colleges and universities; and claimed that the only solution to remedying the problem of propagandizing in the classroom was for “conservative activists … to bring external pressure on the university” (Selden, 2005, p. 37).

Curricula

Emerging from the conservative books claiming liberal bias in higher education curricula, several think tanks and external groups focused on efforts to redefine the undergraduate liberal arts curriculum as one which consists of a Western canon that amounts to education that is derived wholly from content without consideration of the process (Lazere, 2005a; Messer-Davidow, 1993; Selden, 2005). Selden reports that the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Madison Center for Educational Affairs, and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni have received over $18 million in conservative foundation funding to “produce and distribute campus guides and curriculum evaluations designed to influence the public’s perception of university faculty and the undergraduate curriculum ” (p.37). These reports are attempts to efforts to create a ‘mono-intellectual discourse’ that undermines the various methods and approaches to academic inquiry and knowledge creation that have emerged in the critical post-modern academy (Lincoln & Cannella, 2004). The reports argue for change to the undergraduate curricula by both, relying on the authority and influential role that foundations have typically been afforded when partnering with external coordinating organizations to foster educational reforms, and popularizing research that is familiar to a mass audience with only a general understanding of higher education . This conservative approach very much resembles the earlier progressive educational reforms in medical education and the disciplines; where foundations diagnosed the trouble spots. Moreover, by relying on familiar tactics the conservative foundations are afforded cultural legitimacy.

Efforts to influence curricula have been coupled with conservative foundation involvement in educational accreditation. For example, the Olin foundation provided funding to the National Association of Scholars (NAS⁵) to establish an accrediting agency called the National Academy for the Advancement of the Liberal Arts (McMillen, 1992). This agency was designed to stand in sharp contrast to another more centrist accrediting body, the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, by insisting on the Western canon and a body of course work that was supportive of free market capitalism (McMillen, 1992). Again, using the cultural legitimacy that has traditionally accompanied the advice of experts from within the academy, conservative foundations used their grant-making activity to attempt to influence the structure of higher education curricula via altering the standards for accreditation.

In the past two decades, there have been concerted efforts to provide potential students , or what conservative types and much of the general public view as the consumers of higher education , with tools and guides that are presented as a kind of a ‘consumer reports’ function in selecting the best colleges. Olin money provided funding to prepare and publish, The Common Sense Guide to American Law Schools (McMillen, 1992). Similarly, Bradley, Earhart, and Olin monies all support the development of Choosing the Right College, The Common Sense Guide to American Colleges, The Shakespeare File, and Defending Civilization (Selden, 2005). These guides were developed in partnership with organizations such as the Institute for Educational Affairs, NAS, and the Hudson Institute (Stefancic & Delgado, 1996). Selden notes:

Unlike other college guidebooks, which are mostly descriptive, the rightwing guides mount an ideological assault on American higher education reflecting a broader conservative moral, social and political agenda. This agenda joins support for economic privatization and conservative values in the public sphere to the Western canon and resistance to affirmative action. It is designed specifically to achieve a conservative reconstruction of the public’s understanding of social justice, market economics, and the role and responsibilities of the polity in a democracy (p.35)

In general, the field of higher education has responded to external organizations’ college guidebooks and rankings of quality to ensure that both recruitment and institutional prestige remain stable (Litten & Hall, 1989; McDonough, Antonio, Walpole, & Perez, 1998; Meredith, 2004). The usual rankings and guidebooks are produced by the for-profit sector (magazines) and have focused on quantitative data, opinions, or faculty evaluations (McDonough et al., 1998). Conservative foundation patronage and their grantees have structurally introduced new standards of ‘quality’ that higher education has had to contend with, which now include measures of political or ideological bias . Culturally, foundations have helped to add salience to the idea that it is proper for higher education institutions to place attention on the political and ideological balance of their curricular offerings, in an effort to achieve diversity in the marketplace of ideas.

Agenda: Reform Culture of Higher Education So Campuses Support Conservative Views

Conservative foundations have aspired to shift campus culture by funding groups of students , faculty , alumni, and administrators. On a macrosocial level, the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a conservative external knowledge production organization founded by David Horowitz and Peter Collier, has received funding from Olin, Bradley, and other conservative foundations to support the research and publication of Heterodoxy, a journal designed to report on campus culture with “stories about speech codes, diversity training, multiculturalism, date rape, and AIDS” (Stefancic & Delgado, 1996, p. 132), or topics that conservatives typically view as evidence of liberal campus bias . Although this is a solitary example of foundations pursuing an indirect path to influencing higher education culture, there are several other tactics that are targeted more directly at individual members of the higher education community.

Student Press

A common example of conservative foundations ’ attempts to influence campus culture is their funding of the student press (McMillen, 1992; People For the American Way, 1996; R. B. Smith, 1993; Stefancic & Delgado, 1996). In 1979, a University of Chicago student started the publication , Counterpoint, as an alternative to the mainstream campus paper; soon after the Dartmouth Review emerged, along with conservative papers at Michigan, Harvard, Brown, and Yale (Smith, 1993). With direct support from the Olin, Coors, Earhart, Sarah Scaife, and H. Smith Richardson foundations, conservative student papers have grown to populate campuses at both public and private institutions (Smith, 1993). Organizations such as the Madison Center for Educational Affairs and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, using funding from conservative foundations , developed the Collegiate Network to help campus editors pursue conservative agendas in their papers (Messer-Davidow, 1993; Smith, 1993; Stefancic & Delgado, 1996). The Collegiate Network and other conservative think tanks provide guidance for undergraduate journalists by offering grants, a toll-free hotline, conferences, advice, a news service that is linked to national conservative magazines, internships, summer programs in Washington, awards programs, and a clearinghouse for likely advertisers (Smith, 1993; Stefancic & Delgado, 1996). According to Smith’s summation the dominant theme of the conservative student press is “a common perception among students that their educations are being compromised. The culprits: forced multiculturalism and diversity , ‘pandering’ to feminists and homosexuals, and, more basically a pervasive climate of political correctness” (p. 26). Building on the training opportunities for student journalists, the Olin and Bradley foundations fund the National Journalism Center. This organization has functioned as a conservative employment agency and places graduating conservative journalists throughout mainstream media outlets (Stefancic & Delgado, 1996).

Foundations have supported the conservative campus press through direct and indirect means, supplying student papers with grants, and funneling their money through likeminded external organizations which subsequently provide support to student journalists. It is difficult to estimate the extent to which the diffusion of the conservative campus press has spread due to the influence of foundation mobilization versus some other influence like individual student relationships. Regardless of the exact reason, foundation money has helped to sustain the efforts on many campuses and allow students to tap into an established network of powerful elites that have become well versed in communicating a conservative message (Binder & Wood, 2012). Structurally, some institutions have had to adjust their policies and practices, reinterpreting speech codes or rules to address the confrontational brand of conservative student journalism, that tends to foster a culture of hostility on campus (Smith, 1993).

Leadership Training

Conservative think tanks have created an extensive network of conferences and leadership development programs for students (Beckham, 2007; Binder & Wood, 2012; Hutchings, 2007; Lee, 1994; Stefancic & Delgado, 1996). Typically the content of the leadership training consists of learning “broadcast journalism, campaign leadership, public relations, rhetoric and campaign skills … candidate development and Capital Hill staff training” (p.114), and training is often complemented by a conservative speakers bureau and placement service for internships and employment (Stefancic & Delgado, 1996). Notably, the Young America’s Foundation (YAF) has achieved prominence delivering training to young conservative college students since 1969 (Binder & Wood, 2012). With funding from the Wiengand, Stranahan, Salvatori, and Kirby foundations YAF has been able to produce publications such as The Conservative Guide to Campus Activism, and coordinate efforts at countering liberal arts colleges’ progressive cultures through student leadership training, speaker series, and advice on conservative campus activism (Houppert, 2002; Stefancic & Delgado, 1996). More recently, Binder and Woods’ (2012) in-depth study of college students revealed the manner in which YAF’s and other ideologically conservative foundations ’ patronage has contributed to cultivating a conservative political consciousness among American youth on campuses. The efforts of YAF and similar programs (such as the Kirby Foundation’s National Training Center) operate under the logic that by nurturing conservative perspectives early in students ’ intellectual careers, the students will subsequently promote these views in their professional posts in journalism, politics , academe, or the network of conservative think tanks and external organizations (Binder & Wood, 2012; Lazere, 2005a, b, July 20; Lee, 1994; Stefancic & Delgado, 1996).

Leadership training has been a structural formula employed by progressive foundations to support activism that was largely born of the 1960s (Altbach & Cohen, 1990). Typically, an external, often national organization, with expertise provides students with skills, ideas, and strategies. This approach to campus leadership and activism has been implemented widely in the co-curriculum and can be found in campus organizations as varied as fraternities and sororities, to academic / preprofessional clubs, honor societies, sports and recreational organizations, and service or religious student groups (Whipple & O’Neill, 2011). The conservative foundations and think tanks in partnership have employed this familiar approach and developed the resources to help students carry out their leadership plans through the use of conservative speakers’ bureaus and guidebooks for campus level programs and activism. The familiar model of leadership training that foundations and think tanks have used helps justify these activities. Despite a scarcity of empirical evidence evaluating their influence, conservative leadership-training pipelines create the potential for elevating the capacity of participating students to enact a conservative agenda on campus. Based on a pilot study of a conservative student organization, the Young Americans for Freedom at the University of Michigan (Barnhardt, 2006), the leadership and activist training and guidance that individual student members received with the support of foundation funding and think tanks , allowed the small organization to assert itself as an activist force in campaigning for the passage of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (which ended affirmative action in the state of Michigan). It is difficult to argue that the passage of this proposal and others that have preceded it elsewhere have not had a profound effect on the structure, culture, and legal environment of higher education . This study suggests that well trained conservative student activists are likely to effectively promote their ideological objectives.

Faculty Organizations

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) and Campus Watch are two faculty focused organizations that attempt to convene a collective of conservative faculty , administrators, and graduate students (Lazere, 2005a, b; Lenkowsky & Piereson, 2007; People For the American Way, 1996; Stefancic & Delgado, 1996). The Olin, Smith Richardson, Sarah Scaife, Bradley, Coors, J.M., and Wiegand foundations have a history of funding their programs, administrative and operating expenses, publications , and conferences (People For the American Way, 1996; Stefancic & Delgado). Stefancic and Delgado report that NAS’s position papers regularly critique multicultural, women’s, area, and ethnic studies as biased, and institutional affirmative action policies in college admissions, employment , and financial aid as inappropriately compromising standards. To some extent it is unclear to whom these organizations are really primarily resources for - faculty , students , parents of students , college administrators, trustees, or the public at large - given that their approaches attempt to reach all of these constituencies depending on the political salience of mobilizing one or more of these groups for any given higher education issue. Conservative faculty groups exert a great deal of field-level cultural influence on campuses because their members are in position to provide first hand, authoritative accounts of campuses suppressing conservative views and scholarship.

Alumni Involvement and Governance

The National Alumni Forum (NAF) was founded in 1994 with the financial support of the Bradley, Earhart, Olin, and the Smith Richardson foundations, along with the ideological and strategic support of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and NAS (Selden, 2005; Stefancic & Delgado, 1996). NAF aims to elevate alumni awareness of campus political intolerance, the degradation of intellectual standards largely done through the erosion of a Western curricular canon, and sloppy or irresponsible governance (Breneman, 1996; DeRussy, 1996; Martin & Neal, 2002; Stefancic & Delgado, 1996). In recent years, NAF has been intentional in trying to link pedagogy to patriotism in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 (Denvir, 2003; McClennen, 2006; Selden, 2005). Stefancic and Delgado note that NAF pursues their aims by encouraging alumni to:

Use the power of their financial support – $2.9 billion dollars annually – to influence the direction of colleges and universities … by participating in governance , serving on committees and boards, and targeting or withholding gifts according to what they see going on on campus. (p. 127)

After generating a great deal of momentum in the area of conservative trustee activism, NAF changed its name to the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA). ACTA has supported its belief in what it terms ‘alumni rights’ and ‘board activism’ at an increasing number of institutions (Fain, 2006; Fuentes, 1998; Guess, 2007), as exemplified in media attention devoted to insurgent conservative trustee movements, such as that which occurred at Dartmouth College (Lewin, 2007a, b, c; Schemo, 2006). Additionally, ACTA’s brand of alumni governance and involvement has achieved status as a viable means for orienting and training trustees, and has given the Association of Governing Boards some competition (Healy, 1997).

Summary

Conservative foundations ’ channeling alumni, faculty , and students toward conservatism has served to promote (or at least project the appearance of promoting) a conservative campus culture. As evidenced above, these tactics have proved to alter the structure of the field of higher education so that it now has a greater number of campuses with well-financed conservative student papers and conservative student activists, organized conservative faculty and administrators, and a better mobilized collection of alumni prepared to take an activist stance for conservative ideals.

Agenda: Striving for Race-Blind Policies and Practices

Eugenics

The Pioneer Fund has long been associated with the eugenics movement, a line of research focused on linking biology, intellect, and personality and claims that certain races, ethnicity, and classes of people are inherently ‘feebleminded’ or ‘uncouth’ based on their genetic composition (Miller, 1994; Stefancic & Delgado, 1996). Pioneer was outspoken in its opposition to the Brown v. Board of Education on the basis of its research in eugenics, and the fund’s future director Henry Garret, a psychology professor from Columbia University, was a featured witness for the segregationists in the trial (Miller, 1994). Pioneer’s continued strategy (even after eugenics lost much of its credibility) has been to fund individual scholars at dispersed prestigious institutions such as: Johns Hopkins University, University of Pennsylvania, University of California at Santa Barbara and Berkeley, University of Georgia, Stanford University, City College of New York, and the University of Southern Mississippi (Miller, 1994) to foster its line of research. The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994), a book lauded among conservative individuals and think tanks for its anti-affirmative action agenda, relied heavily on the findings of scholars that were sponsored by Pioneer funding (Stefancic & Delgado, 1996). Culturally, the Pioneer fund directly attacked the educational policy of affirmative action by providing sustained support to eugenics research. Although Pioneer is the only fund highlighted in depth, generally speaking, conservative foundation patronage has helped think tanks propel anti-affirmative research, ideology, and campus based campaigns (Messer-Davidow, 1993; Stefancic & Delgado, 1996).

Legal Challenges

Conservative foundations have played an instrumental role in advancing their social agendas with regard to affirmative action (Roelofs, 2003). Initially, the ground work was set with foundation funded think tanks and external knowledge organizations attacking diversity and multiculturalism in the name of preserving academic standards (Lincoln & Cannella, 2004). Then, emerging from the progressive strategy of promoting an educational pipeline to influence legal philosophy, conservative foundations funded a number of public interest law firms that were specifically interested in opposing affirmative action and equal rights legislation (Rhoads, Saenz, & Carducci, 2005; Roelofs, 2003; Southworth, 2005). Subsequently, the foundation funded Center for Individual Rights (CIR, founded in 1989), published handbooks for universities with advice for students , trustees, and institutions on how employ legal rationales to advocate for anti-affirmative action policies in higher education (Cross, 1999; Hebel, 1999; Messer-Davidow, 1993; People For the American Way, 1996; Stefancic & Delgado, 1996). CIR placed advertisements in campus newspapers encouraging students to sue their institutions for racial discrimination (Cross, 1999), and “threatened university trustees and administrators with dire legal penalties if they persisted in their current affirmative action” (p. 95). Foundation support has allowed CIR to take a lead role in contemporary high profile court cases regarding affirmative action, Hopwood v. Texas, Regents of California v. Bakke, and the Michigan cases Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger (Rhoads et al., 2005; Stefancic & Delgado, 1996).

Aside from the court cases, conservative foundations such as Bradley, Olin, and Scaife have contributed over $5.7 million between 1997–2005 in funds to support the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) – an organization founded by the California Regent, Ward Connerly, that lead the passage of the Proposition 209 ballot referendum which ended all affirmative action programs in California (Berkowitz, 2007). ACRI supported the passages of similar ballot referenda in Michigan, Washington, Florida, Nebraska, Arizona, Oklahoma, and worked on passing similar proposals in Missouri and Colorado.

Conservative foundations funded an incremental and multifaceted approach in their attempts to craft a society and a field of higher education without racial affirmative action. The combined efforts of supporting student , faculty , and alumni mobilization provided a cultural climate that was more conducive to affirmative action challenges on campus. Then the subsequent support of external organizations and litigation functioned to promote the structural and legal changes conservative foundations hoped to achieve. This topic certainly remains unsettled as evidenced by the continuation of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin case, that evolved into a second iteration with the U.S. Supreme Court, where that body rendered a decision regarding the legality of universities considering race in selective college admission in June of 2016. As long as an anti-affirmative action social agenda exist, and the funding remains intact, conservative foundations are likely to advance their positions on this matter to pursue their desired higher education policy reforms.

Foundations with Radical Social Agendas Acting in Higher Education

Agenda: Supporting Social Justice and Racial Uplift

Rosenwald Fund

Inspired by Booker T. Washington’s philosophy of racial uplift, Julius Rosenwald a northern Jewish industrial philanthropist, set up a private foundation in 1917 to advance the cause of Negroes in society (Beilke, 1997; Ostrander, 2005) through “four major areas: education, health, race relations and fellowships” (Ostrander, p. 6). Rosenwald was perceived as radical at the time because he believed that the economic success of Whites had a direct tie to the prosperity of Blacks (Beilke, 1997). The Rosenwald fund provided grants to southern Blacks for graduate education because it was largely unavailable for them at that time; and improving the quality of teachers and the training they received, would benefit Blacks at all educational levels (Beilke). The fund also facilitated the establishment of four university centers focused on graduate-level programs for southern Blacks. These centers were developed in partnership with the General Education Board (Beilke) in Washington, DC (Howard University); Atlanta (confederation of Spelman and Moorehouse colleges and the Atlanta University and School of Social Work ); Nashville (Fisk University & Meharry Medical College); and New Orleans (Dillard University and Flint-Goodridge Hospital). Rosenwald provided fellowships to scholars and thus opened previously closed doors to Blacks in higher education . With the assistance of the fellowships, Black scholars were able to establish a notable presence in academic disciplines such as mathematics, sociology, economics, anthropology, education, and biology (Beilke, 1997).

The Rosenwald efforts with regard to Black higher education signaled both structural and cultural transformation in higher education . A solid infrastructure for African American education, research, and scholarship was established; and the accompanying individual support launched many capable Black individuals to achieve levels of academic success that were unparalleled at the time. The display of intellectual talent development in the Black community provided both a road map to emulate institutionally, and evidence that Black academic achievement is attainable.

One of the key characteristics that points to Rosenwald’s radical social agenda was its partnerships with collective organizing. Whether or not it was entirely intentional, the Rosenwald Fund was well-connected to strategic partners in the overall efforts to advance the status of African Americans in U.S. society. The fund coupled its direct grant-making to higher education programs and individuals with financial support for groups that were concerned with issues of race and African American well-being more generally. The fund provided money to emerging civil rights causes like the NAACP and the National Urban League, and to medical services for African Americans (Ostrander, 2005). Beilke’s (1997) analysis indicates that the foundation Board had close ties to progressive organizations and prominent individuals such as the Rockefeller foundation, the Chicago race relations commission, the National Urban League, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. The relational ties Rosenwald cultivated helped integrate the foundation’s resources with mainstream social activism groups, symbolic leaders, and publications that seamed together radical visions of democratic principles and economic ideals (Beilke).

It is important to add that Julius Rosenwald opposed the creation of perpetual philanthropy because of the tendency for it to become overly bureaucratic and perfunctory at the downfall of achieving its primary social goals (Beilke, 1997; Ostrander, 2005). Therefore his will directed that all the principle and interest of the foundation be spent in the twenty-five years after his death in 1932 (Beilke, 1997; Ostrander, 2005). His funding philosophy was to reduce the scope of the organizational machine as a means to direct funds to where they were needed most (Beilke). Essentially, his investment in the capitalistic economic structure ceased to exist once his foundation was established because he wasn’t tied to the revenue created through investments. Thus, the structure of the Rosenwald fund stands out as a radical facet in the sense that it divorced itself from the economy to achieve its vision of social justice (Bothwell, 2003).

Agenda: Believing in the Power of Democratic Civic Participation and Social Movement Ambitions to Transform Society

Democratic Base Building

Foundations have relied on the principle of supporting local, collective action to promote the mobilization of their social agendas . This philosophy extended to direct support for campus-based student organizing. Following her father Julius Rosenwald, Edith Stern established the Stern Fund in 1936 with an explicit focus to “concentrate funding on racial justice” (Ostrander, 2005, p. 41) by pursing systemic and broad changes, an ambitious social agenda for the time. For Stern this agenda translated into grant-making that supported the anti-nuclear movement, alternative energy development, and women’s rights. With regard to higher education , Stern’s social agenda prompted it to finance democratic base-building organizations such as the Students for Democratic Society and CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) (Ostrander, 1999, 2005).

Other foundations have also asserted their resources for the purpose of promoting democratic base building and grassroots support for social justice issues. The Schwarthaupt and Wieboldt Foundations provided funding , leadership training and tactical advise to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) (Jenkins & Halcli, 1999). Jenkins and Halcli view these grant-making efforts as one of the few attempts in the 1950s where foundations funded social movement organizations directly as a means of pursuing their social agendas . Although the Ford foundation is typically perceived as a progressive foundation rather than a radical one, it provided grant money to support the National Student Association (NSA), a group that was viewed in the mainstream as possessing a radical view of participatory campus activism (Hart, 1972). Ford funded NSA’s student leadership training program, which was designed to help students become more effective advocates for pursuing campus-based curricular reforms and dealings with faculty and administrators (Hart, 1972). Jenkins and Halcli (1999) also regarded Ford as acting radically, through its grant-making that “almost single-handedly launched a set of new advocacy organizations” (p.232), including the National Council of LaRaza, the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund. All of these democratic base building examples reinforce the idea that radical social reform foundations tend to receive the ‘radical’ label based on the historical context and cultural climate in which the grants were made. Consequently, in some time periods, scholars’ assessments of Ford’s general progressive tendencies were interpreted as being more extreme, and thus radical.

Neoliberal Strategic Foundations

Today’s neoliberal strategic foundations’ social agendas are focused on activating structural reforms across the field of higher education including: increasing higher education access and degree completion (especially for underserved students ), instituting educational policies and public funding schemas that stress organizational outcomes and metrics that are tightly coupled to foundations’ preferences (Thümler, 2014b), and internally restructuring postsecondary education so that curricula and credentials emphasize individual competencies and skills that are instrumentally useful to employers (Katz, 2012; Wells & Ramdeholl, 2015). The Gates, Lilly, Broad, Walton, and other mega-foundations ’ neoliberal strategic aims and impact have received attention, but most of it has been in the K-12 literature (Hess, 2005; Mehta, Schwartz, & Hess, 2012; Quinn et al., 2014; Ravitch, 2010; Reckhow, 2013). While scholarly analysis surrounding the neoliberal strategic foundations’ higher education aims are fewer in number, and empirical evaluations are rare (Bachetti, 2007), some writing focuses on their social agendas and corresponding field-level impact. Most of what has been written stresses the aim of today’s foundations to aggressively fund initiatives that encourage degree completion and curriculum that closely parallels workforce needs.

Agenda: Create a System of Higher Education that Prioritizes and Incentivizes Degree Completion and Supports Workforce Preparation

Degree Completion

The Lumina foundation declared that it desired to increase postsecondary degree completion to 60 % by 2025. Katz (2012) notes that Lumina and its likeminded peer foundations’ see the completion aim as a way to align the entire educational system. Their complementary work in K-12 has been pursued under the aim of better preparing students to enroll in college, as such college becomes an instrumental means for a career . Lumina’s agenda has become part of the mega-foundation agenda for higher education , that is using their patronage to achieve instrumental degree attainment goals (Katz, 2012). This is typically framed as good for the individuals, and good for economy – which also results in being good for the funders who have functionally accrued the greatest material benefits from the existing economic system. Yeakey (2015) argues that the social impact of advancing major donors’ preferences that favor an instrumental view of higher education , works to foster a culture that stresses the extrinsic value and utility of college and correspondingly overshadows “intrinsic values of social responsibility and critical citizenship” (p.121) that are needed for the maintenance of democracy in American life. Her concerns are a frequent point of emphasis among analysts of the neoliberal strategic approach that is characteristics of many of today’s megafoundations (Ealy, 2011; Edwards, 2011; Ramdas, 2011; Rogers, 2011).

The degree completion agenda is also prefaced in social aims for teaching and instruction in higher education (Boyce, 2013). The neoliberal foundations tend to view instruction and credit-bearing classes based on in-seat class time as a potential hindrance to students progressing towards and completing their degree (Parry et al., 2013). They have a high regard for technology as a pedagogical instrument that can be applied to course delivery to make college more accessible to students who may be restricted by time or location from participating, and educational technology is viewed as an efficient and scalable approach that can diffuse to campuses easily - thus encouraging widespread reform in instruction (Boyce, 2013; Selingo, 2013).

Curriculum and the Content of the Academy

Among the neoliberal strategic foundations, those pursuing curricular reforms most robustly tend to be those foundations that have been more traditionally associated with conservative foundation patronage (Kumashiro, 2012). The Koch foundation is perhaps the leader in this domain, and has drawn much discussion (Flaherty, 2015; Levinthal, 2014a, b, 2015a, b, c; Markay, 2015; Tankersley, 2016). Students ’ concerns on some campuses over the Koch curricular agenda for higher education inspired their grassroots action with the formation of a group called UnKoch My Campus (www.unkochmycampus.org). Tangibly, the Charles Koch foundation has spent $200 million in higher education to date, with a stated desire to elevate this giving as part of its overall social ambition to advance the founders’ beliefs in free and open markets, they see expanding the intellectual impact of these ideas as important to building support for their cause (Levinthal, 2015b; Tankersley, 2016). The report issued by UnKoch My Campus (2015), notes that about one-third of Koch’s giving has been distributed since 2005 to 300 campuses. The Koch approach includes traditional grant-making approaches such as funding individual faculty members’ research and university academic programs, but what characterizes the patronage as neoliberal strategic is intervening into the democratic processes of the university, namely academic freedom traditions. Koch funding has placed conditions on their patronage which included campuses or programs adopting particular course readings, class offerings, and criteria for faculty hires (Flaherty, 2015).

Another wave of neoliberal strategic curricular reforms in higher education is based in advancing a neoliberal philosophy of education that views the problems of education as best remedied through a business-oriented style of management. In pursuing this aim, the Broad and Fisher foundations have been funding efforts that work to alter graduate training in education. These foundations seek to shift the professional preparation of K-12 school leaders from the grasp of universities’ schools of education to non-university-based professional preparation entities such as charter school management organizations, and partnership entities that provide leadership and executive management training (Saltman, 2009). Hess and Kelly (2005) describe the aim as elevating ‘non-traditional’ providers of educational leader preparation as superior to university-based degree programs for K-12 educational administrators because they are more equipped to innovate and work quickly. Foundations’ patronage in this area is providing both structural change in credentialing educational leaders, and culturally it is cultivating greater legitimacy for non-university based forms of educational preparation.

Since we are currently in the midst of neoliberal strategic foundations’ efforts, the field-level effects and corresponding impact of their patronage on higher education is, in large measure, yet to be determined. Gauging today’s neoliberal strategic foundations’ social impact will ultimately be judged in time, and by history – arguably it is too soon to tell if their agendas will amass to observable structural reforms across the field of higher education , and sustainable cultural shifts in how the public and policy makers conceive of the role of postsecondary education in society. The openness of gauging foundations’ social impact is ironic given that today’s foundations are notorious for their absolute commitment to identifying accountability metrics and specifying time intervals in which their proscribed outcomes shall be achieved in their funded initiatives (Bachetti, 2007). Thümler’s (2014a) summation in his edited volume (Thümler, Bögelein, Beller, & Anheir, 2014) evaluating the contemporary impact of educational philanthropy states that the cases analyzed present “no evidence that they [foundations] can achieve anything like a ‘turnaround’ of the system and there are at least three good reasons to assume that they are not well advised to try” (p.238). He then discusses the reasons for this conclusion. He notes foundations’ “lack of democratic legitimacy” (p.238), a matter which other scholars raise (Edwards, 2011; Rogers, 2011, 2015b) on account of foundations being accountable to only their board members while working aggressively to shape public systems that are enacted through an electoral system of representative governance for and by the people. Thümler also notes that there is “no robust evidence that widespread change” of the sort foundations are pursuing “will actually lead to quick, lasting and substantial improvement of academic results or any other of major objectives” (p.239) since problems of poverty, racism, and geographic migration acting upon the educational systems are beyond the reach of foundation funded interventions. And third, Thümler notes that a foundation-meditated turnaround of an educational system is unlikely because rather than drawing empirical evidence, foundations “take refuge in approaches based either on ideology or prevalent rational myths” which he describes as “putting undue emphasis on allegedly rational organizational structures, due procedures and proper evaluation techniques” (p.239). Thümler’s analysis stands out as one of the few empirical works, but other scholars have drawn similar conclusions through careful scholarly critique noting the potential influence of foundations’ agendas and their reform aims. In fact, an entire issue of Society was dedicated to this matter in 2011.

The tricky thing about understanding the impact of the social agendas of the neoliberal strategic foundations is trying to anticipate what the impact of their efforts will be while things are happening in real time. Much of what is understood about foundations’ social agendas has been based on retrospective analyses. Rogers (2015a) draws on Merton’s conception of manifest and latent functions of social institutions to contemplate the social impact of the current wave of mega-foundation philanthropy. She points to the declared or manifest agenda that the Gates foundation is leading as an example. Gates has stated aims to boost test scores in K-12, facilitate college readiness, increase graduation rates and college degree completion, and to use educational technology to achieve scale and improvement to instruction (Katz, 2012). Rogers describes the latent functions as those “outcomes that are either unanticipated or unintended, and thus not publicly announced” (p.768). Here she notes how Gates’ patronage in pursuing the aforementioned agenda has contributed to the dismantling of some large, urban public high schools. This dismantling was not an overt aim of Gates, but the funding strategy utilized to realize the Gates’ vision was associated with the unanticipated change. Moreover, through this example, Rogers highlights how the manifest and latent functions of patronage often have substantial and often irreversible consequences, especially once foundation support ends. In many respects the current writing about the neoliberal strategic foundations’ agenda for higher education resembles Rogers’ (2015a, b) sentiments; it raises questions about what the intended and unintended cumulative impact of neoliberal strategic foundation patronage will ultimately have on the field as time passes.

Evaluations of Foundations’ Social Agendas in the Field of Higher Education

Despite the challenge in tightly or causally linking foundations’ agendas to subsequent specific outcomes, it is appropriate to conclude that foundations’ social agendas have indeed shaped the field of higher education in dramatic ways. Due to foundation social agendas and their accompanying patronage, this synthesis reveals that higher education has accrued a wealth of benefits from securing financial stability through the pensions and endowments; to systemic coordination of admissions, accreditation, and research; to the structuring of disciplines; to innovative ways of translating social contention into academic endeavors, among others. Higher education has also suffered losses because of social agenda foundation patronage , limits on its autonomy of action (especially on matter of race-based affirmative action), restrictions on academic freedom, and a drifting away from being the social institution responsible for research and knowledge creation.

In my assessment the most profound consequence of foundations’ social agenda inspired grant-making has been the full scale institutionalization of the external knowledge organizations that were first developed by progressive foundations , and cultivated by conservative foundations . True to neo-institutional theory and field-level theories of resource mobilization (DiMaggio, 1991; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Jenkins, 1983; Meyer & Rowan, 1977), conservative foundations mimicked the strategies of their predecessors, the progressives, and then expanded these strategies to develop additional external organizations made up of students and alumni. As Lincoln and Cannella (2004) and Messer-Davidow (1993) have argued, these external knowledge organizations have tested the limits of what constitutes expert knowledge, and have created direct competition for the field of higher education . I would take their argument one step further, and suggest that the full institutionalization of the external knowledge apparatus (Karl, 1985) that now exists, has culminated in the establishment of an entirely new sector with which colleges and universities must now contend in the contemporary field of American higher education .

Figure 5.3 depicts a revised version of the field of higher education , after taking into consideration the institutionalization of the external knowledge sector. It depicts the external knowledge production sector in a horizontally equivalent position to higher education institutions. There is a box drawn around the higher education institutions and the external knowledge sector to symbolize the tendencies of the state, the market, religion, and the public to treat the two entities as if they were one and the same.

Fig. 5.3

The field of higher education modified

Today neoliberal strategic foundations appear to be strengthening the structural shifts in the knowledge creation apparatus, exemplified by their concerted effort to fund research inside their organizations and through partnering think tanks and advocacy organizations (Lubienski et al., 2016; Reckhow & Snyder, 2014). Rogers (2011) argues that the patterns of neoliberal strategic patronage are contributing, in part, to a blurring of the lines of existing social structure. Specifically, she argues that today’s funding norms are muddying the distinctions between non-profit, public, private, investment, and beneficence. Multiple terms have been used to describe the current cleavages that foundation support is placing on the current social structure. Quinn et al. (2014) regard the neoliberal strategic foundation approach as a type of ‘institutional entrepreneurship,’ where foundations have become skillful in ‘sector-bending,’ exporting their corporate and managerial stance to their social investment strategy (Rogers, 2011). Reckhow and Snyder’s (2014) analysis of foundation patronage in education documents contemporary foundations’ increasing preferences for funding ‘jurisdictional challengers,’ or organizations that work on education in some way but are not conventional educational organizations (school districts, colleges, universities). These shifts will have long term consequences and require greater empirical scrutiny.

While this synthesis suggests that the social agendas of foundations have had a profound influence on higher education , it also suggests that the scholarship on this topic is virtually devoid of helpful guidance on how to respond or react to an agenda. The field of higher education and the foundation community desperately need to know – what happens when institutions choose not to accept grant money from a foundation because of their social agenda and views? Is there an agentic theory of action for how campuses might legitimately pass on socially motivated foundation patronage ? Faculty , university community members, and students are increasingly commenting on the viability of turning foundation money down (see Flaherty, 2015; Jaschik, 2007; UnKoch My Campus, 2015) for practical, philosophical, or socially responsible reasons. Higher education deserves a critical assessment of the ways in which it enacts its responsibility to provide for the public good by exercising some intention in accepting or denying foundation funding that is motivated by social agendas . Future research should respond to this need.

Osei-Kofi (2010) emphasizes another point that is of critical importance to contemplating the future of research on the private foundation patronage in higher education . She notes that systematic analyses of the federal tax-exempt status that benefit foundations are rarely pursued, and much of the current foundation research is led and supported by foundation insiders. The first issue she raises suggests that the tax-exempt privilege is philosophically conditioned on foundations taking action that are in the public’s collective interest; and her second issue suggests that the research that does exist may advance a sympathetic view of foundation intervention, or presuppose foundation benevolence without deeply interrogating a contrarian view. Other matters ripe for future research are the gaps that analyses tend to gloss over regarding how contemporary funders obtained their fortunes. What if any implications do the origins of a funder’s fortune have on how students learn about organizational ethics and leadership? Rogers (2011) argues that there is some evidence that private philanthropists have given “to charity in part to atone for whatever were conceived of as the sins of business” (p.377). Her comments signal the numerous historical and contemporary examples of the contradictions between the process of wealth accumulation and the work of the private foundation philanthropists. Giving, sharing, and helping others are nearly uncontestable virtues, but if or when the capacity for doing these things is a function of having taken more than one’s share, benefitting while contributing to the suffering of others, or exploiting people or public resources, the relative ‘goodness’ of the deeds are quickly tainted. Students learn through modeling; will these realities that tie power, wealth, beneficence, and collective good shape the next generation of leaders? Osei-Kofi (2010) remarks:

We must ask ourselves how the ways in which Gates’ investment in polluting oil companies while claiming to help those worst afflicted by this pollution are similar to the ways in which Gates’ educational initiatives function to temper our outrage over issues of limited access to higher education for minoritized populations and shift our focus away from responsibilities of the State (p.24).

Closing Thoughts

With all of the higher education practices and behaviors that have links to foundations’ social agenda grant-making, questions remain about whether the modifications and developments in the higher education field have served the public well. Generally speaking, throughout the literature reviewed, except for Arnove and colleagues (1980b), scholars tend to speak appreciatively of the institution building that progressive foundations engaged in, and decry the conservative foundations ’ ‘attacks’ on higher education . These interpretations provide few theoretical implications for whether the public good has been served, even though the analyses present information that there is a relationship between foundations social agendas and the structure, culture, and legal dimensions of the field of higher education . Often, authors conclude with the proposition that the key to responding to foundations’ social agendas is increasing the higher education community’s knowledge of them. Simply stated, this proposal is theoretically short-sighted. The field of higher education needs a conceptualization of how it should deal with the very intentional social agendas of foundations and their accompanying grant-making behaviors , in order to ensure that the outcomes of socially motivated patronage fulfill the spirit of philanthropy, to serve the public.

Appendices

Appendices

Appendix A

Social Agenda Tendencies of Philanthropic Foundations Acting in the Field of Higher Education

Foundation	Evidence of agenda, cited in:
Progressive Foundations
Peabody Education Fund	Cuninggim (1972), Curti and Nash (1965), Flexner (1952), Hammack (2006), Hechinger (1967), Hollis (1938), Roelofs (2003), and Smith (2001)
John F. Slater Fund	Conley (1990), Cuninggim (1972), Curti and Nash (1965, Hollis (1938), Rhind and Bingham (1967), Roelofs (2003), and Smith (2001)
Rockefeller Foundation (Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, General Education Board, Laura Spelman Memorial Fund)a	Curti and Nash (1965), Douglas (1987), Fisher (1980), Fleishman (2007), Flexner (1952), Grant (1999), Hammack (2006), Havighurst (1981), Hechinger (1967), Hollis (1938), Kohler (1985), Kumashiro (2012), Lazere (2005a, b), Lenkowsky and Piereson (2007), McCarthy (1985), Nielsen (1996), Proietto (1999), Rabinowitz (1990), Rhind and Bingham (1967), Roelofs (2003, 2005), Williams (2001), Kumashiro (2012), and Osei-Kofi (2010)
Anna Jeanes Fund	Conley (1990), Cuninggim (1972), Curti and Nash (1965), Nielsen (1996), Rhind and Bingham (1967)
Carnegie Foundation (Carnegie Corporation, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching)a	Brooks (2015), Condliffe Lagemann (1983), Fleishman (2007), Hammack (2006), Havighurst (1981), Hechinger (1967), Hollis (1938), Kumashiro (2012), Lazere (2005a, b), Lenkowsky and Piereson (2007), McCarthy (1985), Proietto (1999), Rhind and Bingham (1967), Roelofs (2003, 2005), Williams (2001), Kumashiro (2012), Osei-Kofi (2010)
Russell Sage Foundation	Fleishman (2007), Flexner (1952), Hammack (2006), Havighurst (1981), Hechinger (1967), Hollis (1938), Lazere (2005a, b), McCarthy (1985), Proietto (1999), Rhind and Bingham (1967), and Roelofs (2003, 2005)
Ford Foundation (Fund for the Advancement of Education (FAE))a	Brooks (2015), Conley (1990), Fleishman (2007), Havighurst (1981), Hechinger (1967), Kumashiro (2012), Lazere (2005a, b), Lenkowsky and Piereson (2007), McCarthy (1985), Proietto (1999), Raynor (1999), Roelofs (2003, 2005), Rojas (2003), Rhind and Bingham (1967), Williams (2001), and Kumashiro (2012)
Twentieth Century Fund	Flexner (1952), Hechinger (1967), Hollis (1938), and Roelofs (2003)
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation	Lazere (2005a, b), McMillen (1992), and Roelofs (2003)
Conservative Foundations
John M. Olin Foundation	Binder and Wood (2012), Cole and Reid (1986), Fiore (1997), Houppert (2002), Kumashiro (2012), Lazere (2005a, b), Lenkowsky and Piereson (2007), Lincoln and Cannella (2004), McMillen (1992), Messer-Davidow (1993), People for the American Way (1996), Roelofs (2003), Selden (2005)), Smith (1993), Stefancic and Delgado (1996)
Richard Mellon Scaife (Sarah Scaife Foundation, Cart hage Foundation)a	Covington (1997), Fiore (1997), Houppert (2002), Kumashiro (2012), Lazere (2005a, b), Lenkowsky and Piereson (2007), Lincoln and Cannella (2004), McMillen (1992), Messer-Davidow (1993), People for the American Way (1996), Smith (1993), and Stefancic and Delgado (1996)
Salvatori Foundationa	Stefancic and Delgado (1996)
H. Smith Richardson	Covington (1997), Fiore (1997), Kumashiro (2012), Lenkowsky and Piereson (2007), McMillen (1992), Messer-Davidow (1993), Roelofs (2003), Smith (1993), Stefancic and Delgado (1996)
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation	Binder and Wood (2012), Covington (1997), Fiore (1997), Kumashiro (2012), Lazere (2005a, b), Lenkowsky and Piereson (2007), Lincoln and Cannella (2004), Messer-Davidow (1993), McMillen (1992), People for the American Way (1996), Roelofs (2003), Selden (2005), and Stefancic and Delgado (1996)
Coord Foundation (Castle Rock Foundation)a	Binder and Wood (2012), Lazere (2005a, b), Messer-Davidow (1993), People for the American Way (1996), Smith (1993), Selden (2005)and Stefancic and Delgado (1996)
F.M. Kirby Foundation	Messer-Davidow (1993), Stefancic and Delgado (1996), and Binder and Wood (2012)
The Earhart Foundation	Covington (1997, Fiore (1997), Lenkowsky and Piereson (2007), Smith (1993), Selden (2005)Stefancic and Delgado (1996)
Charles G Koch Foundation	Binder and Wood (2012), Covington (1997), Fiore (1997), People for the American Way (1996), and Starobin (1996)
David H. Koch Foundation	Covington (1997), and Fiore (1997)
Claude R. Lambe Foundation	Covington (1997), and Fiore (1997)
Phillip M. McKenna Foundation	Covington (1997), Fiore (1997), Messer-Davidow (1993), and Stefancic and Delgado (1996)
J.M. Foundation	Covington (1997), Fiore (1997), Messer-Davidow (1993), People for the American Way (1996), and Stefancic and Delgado (1996)
Henry Salvatori Foundation	Covington (1997), Fiore (1997), People for the American Way (1996), and Starobin (1996)
Pioneer Fund	Miller (1994), Stefancic and Delgado (1996)
M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust	Messer-Davidow (1993) and Stefancic and Delgado (1996)
Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation	Binder and Wood (2012) and Kumashiro (2012)
Lilly Endowment of Indianapolis	Lenkowsky and Piereson (2007)
Radical Social Reform
Rosenwald Fund	Beilke (1997), Conley (1990), Curti and Nash (1965), Flexner (1952), Hechinger (1967), Nielsen (1996), Ostrander (1999, 2005), Rabinowitz (1990), and Rhind and Bingham (1967)
Stern Fund	Hechinger (1967), Ostrander (2005), Roelofs (2003), and Rabinowitz (1990)
Schwartzhaupt Foundation	Andrews (1958), Jenkins and Halcli (1999), and Rabinowitz (1990)
Wieboldt Foundation	Cuninggim (1972), Jenkins and Halcli (1999) and Rabinowitz (1990)
Neoliberal Strategic Foundations
Eli & Edythe Broad Foundation	Katz (2012), Kumashiro (2012), Lubienski et al. (2016); Quinn et al. (2014), Rogers (2015b), and Saltman (2009)
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, ‘Gates’	Broad (2014) Edwards (2011), Hall and Thomas (2012), Husock (2011), Katz (2012), Lorenzi and Hilton (2011), Lubienski et al. (2016), McGoey (2015), Osei-Kofi (2010), Quinn et al. (2014), Ramdas (2011), Rogers (2011, 2015b, 2016), Saltman (2009), and Wells and Ramdeholl (2015)
Fisher Foundation	Lubienski et al. (2016) and Saltman (2009)
Kresge Foundation	Wells and Ramdeholl (2015)
Koch Charitable Foundation	Boyce (2013), Flaherty (2015), Miller and Bellamy (2012), and Rogers (2015b)
Lumina Foundation	Katz (2012) and Wells and Ramdeholl (2015)
Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation	Katz (2012), Kumashiro (2012), Lubienski et al. (2016), Osei-Kofi (2010), Quinn et al. (2014), and Saltman (2009)

1. ^a Donor funded multiple foundations under different names
2. Note: Foundations are listed only if multiple references note the existence of a social agenda, and a general tendency to make grants in the field of higher education. This was intended to serve as a very cursory representation of consensus regarding the foundation’s agenda

Appendix B

Comprehensive Analysis of the Role of Private Philanthropic Foundations’ Social Agendas in Shaping the Field of Higher Education

Area of activity	Fndt. approach	Field-level intervention	Primary effects	Secondary effects
Progressive Social Agendas
Agenda: Creating a System of Higher Education Free from External Controls
Endowments	Driver	Direct, to institutions willing to comply with the criteria for eligibility	Structural: Provided a financial basis for institutions, to support growth and stability over time	Cultural: Established foundations as possessing the power to expect institutions to comply with their directives and conditions when gifts are made
Pensions	Driver	Direct, to institutions willing to comply with the criteria for eligibility	Structural: Established pensions for professors and served to stabilize and professionalize the role of faculty	Cultural: Reinforced the appropriateness of conditional giving, and the acceptability of foundations getting what they want when large sums of money are involved
Admissions & Accrediting Criteria	Partner	Indirect	Structural: Established College Entrance Exam Board process, and institutionalized a standard system of counting academic units	Cultural: The Carnegie units and entrance exams became the default criteria for high school accreditation: The process of forming interlocking networks of likeminded elites gained prominence as a useful strategy for inciting educational change
Business Practices	Partner	Direct	Structural: Instituted stable practices in accounting that worked to sustain institutions financially over time; Formalized college business officers into a profession	Cultural: Displayed foundations as able to synthesize expertise that can be used broadly to help higher education
Agenda: Believing in Education and Research to Solve Major Social Issues
Medical Education Reform	Driver	Direct: to prestigious select institutions	Structural: Established contemporary medical education model used in U.S.; Formalized partnerships between institutions and teaching hospitals	Cultural: Foundations set precedent of using surveys to diagnose problems m higher education
Social Work Reform	Driver	Direct: to geographically dispersed institutions	Structural: Established dominant trend on social work curriculum and external knowledge production apparatus; Formalized community mobilization as a part of the work of social work training	Cultural: Stabilized survey methodology as the leading way of conducting social science research; Reified an individualized view of social problems: Professionallized the social work field
International education	Partner	Direct: to geographically dispersed institutions	Structural: Established area students programs. Formalized International Institute of Education	Cultural: Legitimated the idea that curriculum and education promotes peace through awareness of individual and societal differences
Development of External Knowledge Organizations	Driver	Indirect	Structural: Established the national coordinating organizations to promote a unified approach to research and knowledge production (Social Science Research Council, etc.)	Cultural: Formalized and legitimated a path for higher education research to have direct ties to government social policy making
Agenda: Supporting and Assisting Socially Disadvantaged Groups
Aid to south	Driver and Partner	Direct and Indirect simultaneously	Structural: Helped to institutionalize quality higher education for Blacks despite segregationist policies; Established state level departments of education with a focus on coordination	Cultural: Established precedent for foundations intervening on issues of race in higher education
Child development studies	Driver	Direct	Structural: Structured the discipline of child development	Cultural: Created a precedent for foundations to translate broad social movement aims into legitimate academic endeavors
Women’s studies	Driver	Direct, to prestigious select institutions and promising scholars and students	Structural: Structured the discipline of women’s studies	Cultural: Created a precedent for foundations to translate contentious social movement aims into legitimate academic endeavors; Affirmed the strategy of focusing on elite institutions to diffuse into the rest of the field of higher education
Agenda: Remedying the Problems of Race Relations in the U.S.
Opportunity to underre-presented individuals	Partner	Direct and indirect	Structural: Directed scholarships to underrepresented individuals based on their racial status; Supported summer programs for pre-college preparation for underrepresented and disadvantaged students	Legal: FAE’s support of Black in higher education was one of many factors that prompted Congressional consideration of the appropriateness of this type of foundation activity; Ford’s collaboration with external funding bodies fueled the perception of the academy being part of a communist plot. Cultural: Congressional response reified the legitimacy of questioning whether foundations should/can be involved in activities that have the potential to alter the present social structure for Blacks
Black studies	Partner	Direct, to prestigious select institutions and promising scholars and students	Structural: Structured the discipline of Black studies	Cultural: Ford’s giant making tended to dampen the intellectual fervor around Black nationalism; Ford’s involvement stressed the role of foundations in tying academic program promotion to social movement and activist causes; Affirmed the strategy of focusing on elite institutions to diffuse into the rest of the field of higher education
Legal education	Partner	Direct, to prestigious select institutions and promising scholars and students	Structural: Expanded the ties between law education, legal scholarship, and legal practice	Legal: The expertise of the legal academic apparatus helped allott legal legitimacy to the idea of arguing for rights based advocacy based on individual status, characteristics. Legal & Cultural: Affirmed that foundations work as key instruments in crafting a pipeline strategy to influence the education, training, practice, and interpretation of legal policy in the broader goal of shaping public policy.
				Cultural: The academic expertise in the area of rights based advocacy helped to give creedence to the idea that it serves the public well to have foundations and the academy (both institutions that serve the public good) advocate for rights for groups that are excluded in some way
Access and Equity	Partner	Direct, to Myrdal study: Indirect, funding to activist organizations	Structural: Foundations helped produce the Brown v. Board verdict	Legal: Foundations’ integrated approach to research and activist funding helped to produce the Brawn v. Board verdict
			Cultural: Demonstrated the use of expert research as an important component to understanding race relations in America
Conservative Social Agendas
Agenda: Believing in Ideas and Research to Solve the Problem of Liberal Bias
External think tanks	Driver	Indirect	Structural: Conservative foundations advanced the external knowledge production and dissemination apparatus, positioning think tanks and other external groups that conduct research as parallel entities to higher education	Cultural: Firmly established the acceptability of employing a system of advice and policy advocacy that was based on expert knowledge produced outside the academy
Internal research centers	Driver	Direct, to prestigious select institutions and promising scholars and students	Structural: Foundations created research programs in the academy that directly foster scholarship and publication of conservative agendas	Cultural: Foundations created a body of expertise within higher education, that by virtue of its placement their, the conservative research centers can piggy back on the legitimacy of the principle of academic objectivity.
Underre-presented scholars	Driver	Direct, to scholars and students at prestigious institutions	Structural: Foundations provided scholarships to underrepresented individuals based on their conservative views or research interests	Structural: Foundations helped to increase representation of conservative scholars in the academy and helped to support a training pipeline for fostering conservative views in disciplines and departments in higher education; Cultural: Foundations helped to assert a larger role for conservative ideology in the academy
Agenda: Changing the Structure of Higher Education so that it Embodies Conservative Views
Curricula	Driver	Indirect	Structural: Foundations have helped introduce new standards of ‘quality’ that higher education has had to contend with, which include a measure of political or ideological bias	Cultural: Foundations have helped to add salience to the idea that it is proper for higher education institutions to place attention on the political and ideological balance of curricular content in an effort to achieve diversity in the marketplace of ideas
Agenda: Changing the Culture of Higher Education so Campuses Support Conservative Views
Student press	Driver/Partner	Direct, to papers at prestigious institutions: Indirect, to support advisory organizations	Cultural: Presence of papers fuels conservative idea dissemination on campus and within student communities	Structural: The field of higher education experienced a proliferation of new conservative campus newspapers; Institutions were forced to deal with the presence of these papers in student organization or speech policies; Legal: Created a welcoming climate to future anti-affirmative action legal and legislative action
Leadership training	Driver	Direct, funding for on campus events; Indirect, to external organizations	Cultural: Foundation sponsored training helped to produce a well trained groups of mobilized conservative campus activists	Structural: Increased ability of students ready to enact a conserative agenda on campus; Legal: Created a welcoming climate to future anti-affirmative action legal and legislative action
Faculty organizations	Partner	Indirect, funding to external organizations	Cultural: Foundaton sponsorship helped to mobilize faculty throughout higher education to collectively focus on advancing conservative views and causes	Structural: NAS and Campus Watch organizations began to pop up on campuses with mobilized faculty; Legal: Created a welcoming climate to future anti-affirmative action legal and legislative action
Alumni organizations	Partner	Indirect, to external organizations	Cultural: Foundation sponsorship helped to create an environment where alumni felt a greater obligation to look deeply into the operations and curriculum of campuses	Structural: Foundation sponsorship of alumni groups helped to increased the salience and acceptability of of activist trustee behavior; ACTA provided training in the field of higher education that gave AGB competition; Legal: Created a welcoming climate to future anti-affirmative action legal and legislative action
Agenda: Striving for Race-Blind Policies and Practices
Eugenics	Partner	Direct	Cultural: Foundation involvement helped to translate contentious ideas into ‘so-called’ objective academic research endeavors	Legal: The foundation supported research served as evidence for the segregationists in Brown v. Board, a case with profound implications for education
				Cultural: Foundation supported research helped foster a binary contentious dynamic in the research on race and merit, where the eugenics showcased the ‘other’ side of objectivity compared to the stream of research that grew from the Myrdal report
Legal Challenges	Driver	Indirect, to external organization	Legal & Structural: Foundation supported anti-affirmative action referenda and case law has forced individual institutions and the field of higher education to rethink its practices and policies for recruiting and retaining underrepresented students	Curlural: Foundation support of anti-affirmative action policies affirmed the individual rights based approach to equality at the expense of other arguments. Foundation involvement helped to promote the idea that any individual rights based approach to equality is essentially a tactic to look out for the ‘public good’
Radical Social Reform Social Agendas
Agenda: Supporting Social Justice and Racial Uplift
Advance Racial Equity for Blacks (Rosenwald Fund)	Driver	Direct	Structural: Established research centers and fostered graduate training for southern Blacks	Cultural: Foundation funding facilitated the breaking down of cultural barriers to African American academic achievement; Foundation tactic of partnering with activist organizations and other progressive individuals helped create a climate to advance the cause of promoting African American education
Agenda: Believing in the power of democratic civic participation and social movement ambitions to transform society
Democratic base building	Catalyst	Indirect	Cultural: Foundations’ promotion of grassroots organizations in the field of higher education affirmed that campus involvement is a piece of the process in fulfilling wide scale social transformation agendas	Structural: Foundations provided assistance for grassroots campus organizations to become more active and advance their progressive ideas
Neoliberal Strategic Foundations
Agenda: Create a system of higher education that prioritizes and incentivizes degree completion and supports workforce preparation.
Degree completion	Driver	Indirect	Cultural: Legitimates the ideas that higher education is the instrumental training ground for economic participation define by the needs of elite capital, and that degree attainment can mend systemic inequities. De-emphasizes other social purposes that education can serve in society, as well as other factors that contribute to systemic economic inequities	Structural: Infuse money across the system of higher education to students, to student support and transition programs within universities, and external intermediary organizations that offer guidance to assist students in persisting towards their degrees. Interact and support external organizations and advocacy groups to emphasize degree completion as a policy framework and metric upon which colleges are evaluated
Curricular Change	Driver	Direct	Structural: Increase the financial resources of academic departments and programs, and faculty that teach neoliberal economic principles and theories, and adopt corresponding course materials. Build a parallal academic training structure outside of the academy for graduate training adn credentialing for educational administrators	Cultural: Extending legitimacy to external parties exercising influence or control over curriculum and credentialing. Diminishes the autonomy of faculty in shaping content of courses, degree programs, and curricula generally