Summary by John
Gibbs
David Horowitz,
“Billion Dollar Brains,” Ramparts,
#8, 1969
The
Main Point
The
development of the modern American university was molded by the power wealth
and its owner’s control. This article,
through example, illustrates how capital investment of large investors was/is
able to shape higher education and policy research by controlling the
institutions much like a large corporation.
“I beg you to consider:
if this is a firm, and if the Board of Regents are the Board of
directors…then…the faculty are a bunch of employees and we’re the raw
material.”
Summary
College
vs. University
Prior
to the Civil War, colleges were small and more directed to their principle
function as finishing schools and theological seminaries for the upper
class. During the industrial revolution
when wealth was expanded to many people, industrialists readily gave charitable
donations to technological institutes who would retain their name and endorse
the technical process that would keep the “money mills rolling.” These wealthy businesspersons and
industrialists had now become “entrepreneurs” of higher education. With more money being received and with
pressure form their contributors, colleges were forced into expansion. This expansion yielded the modern day
university.
Education Reform
“The very ambition of
such corporations to reform educational abuses is itself a source of
danger. Men are not constituted
educational reformers by having a million dollars.”
While
not trying to directly alter higher learning in American institutions,
foundations like the Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations imposed great
influence by exerting power through their wealth. Their ability to influence came largely from being the largest
single contributors of endowment funds.
“By 1931-2, it was estimated that the foundations had directly
stimulated the giving of $660 million, or fully two-thirds of the total
endowment of all American institutions of higher learning – colleges,
universities and professional schools.”
During this time, Carnegie decided to provide all college teachers with
free pensions. Due to the confusion of
the time and since no institution that wanted to attract or retain quality
teachers could refuse the offer, the foundation set guidelines as to what
defined a college and imposed a general system of standards on American
institutions of higher learning.
From the Top, Down
The
American system of higher education is “a highly centralized, pyramidal
structure in which the clearly defined escalating heights intellectually
dominate the levels below.” Within the
more than 2000 colleges and universities, 75 per cent of the PhD’s are awarded
in only 25 of them. These 25 form a
somewhat “tight-knit intellectual establishment” which produces PhD’s with
similar ideas about what their field covers, how it should be taught, and how
to advance it. Responsibility for such
a system lies with the foundations that shaped the system. In the beginning of the university era, the
great foundations created a “lead system” of colleges, by virtue of prestige
who would set the standards for the rest of the educational system. Therefore, much of the two-thirds of the
total endowment went to this lead system.
David Horowitz,
“Sinews of Empire,” Ramparts #7, October 1969
Main Point
This
article studies how specialist in fields of international policy created, with
the assistance of the Ford Foundations and others, “area studies” in some
centralized institutions to gather information and produce experts in the
fields.
Summary
Creation of “Area Studies”
During
World War II, intellectual elite were often mobilized into assisting the government
and putting itself at the service of
Government Benefits