Payton Papers - The Role of Philanthropy in the Future of Higher Education

Most philanthropic foundations are engaged in all three kinds of activities, although the myth is that we are only engaged in the third—in ferreting out the sources of difficulty and developing innovative solutions to them.

To be involved in the long-term growth and development of education means trying to be aware of the larger environment. That environment presents three issues at the moment, which I will discuss as illustrations of a foundation strategy. One is immediate, a second is medium-term, and the third is long-term.

"Immediate" for me means the next five years. "Medium-term" I define as extending over the next decade or so. "Long-term" extends to say, 2015, when the graduates of the coming academic year will be about the average age of those present here.

The immediate issue is the impact of tax reform on philanthropic resources and giving patterns.

The medium-term question is about governance—about the evidence of what I will call for purposes of provocation "creeping capitalism" in public higher education, following a long period of what others once called "creeping socialism" in private higher education.

The third and long-term question is the changing character of American society, and what those changes mean for educators now as well as for your successors.

Our foundation will not become involved in the first issue. As a company-sponsored foundation, we avoid involvement with specific tax policy issues.

The educational question involved that touches on your interests and ours is the question of public understanding of tax policy and philanthropy. My impression is that Congress was handicapped by its own ignorance in trying to weigh the effects of the proposed changes in tax policy on philanthropy. I hope that somewhere within the philanthropic community will be found the resources to support continuing historical as well as analytical research in this field.

The second issue, over the next decade or so, is the complex of issues so well illustrated in New York's "system" of higher education. I have always believed—perhaps in a partisan way—that New York greatly benefits from its diverse conglomeration of colleges and universities. My own advocacy was always intended to sustain the system rather than to yield to the temptation to argue for one sector's interests to the fundamental detriment of the other.

I borrow from John T. Flynn's attack on "creeping socialism" a generation ago to remind you that it was in the period beginning in the late 1960s that private higher education in New York sought and was given access to public revenues. These days, in this state and elsewhere, an as-yet unrecognized phenomenon that might be called "creeping capitalism" is under way in the public institutions.

The publicized aspect of this is the emergence of major capital campaigns among the great public research universities. (New York lags behind California, Minnesota, and others in this competition.) The unpublicized aspects include the appearance of aggressive and increasingly sophisticated fund-raising efforts among state colleges and community colleges.

We have increased the share of our grant funds that will be allocated to help institutions improve their fund raising. We hope to see an increased effectiveness among the small liberal arts colleges that are in greatest jeopardy. We also hope to see the public institutions begin to catch up with the private colleges and universities in their efforts to raise money from alumni and parents. We believe that trustees should play a more prominent role, and that there should be a widespread effort to improve the professional standing of development officers.

But it is very clear that we will have to see a more balanced appreciation of fund raising—both its great potential and its real limitations—among all of those directly involved with higher education.

A second aspect that has gone largely unnoticed is the philosophical change implicit in what has taken place: the change in management philosophy and governance of the state university system.

A generation ago, the private institutions were quite content with being private and the public with being public. Each saw its virtues as unambiguously offsetting its limitations; for the most part, neither talked much about its limitations. Public institutions today see the need for greater flexibility and diversity, flexibility almost by definition associated with private higher education. Private institutions, decreasingly able to sustain themselves by tuition income and philanthropy, discovered 20 years ago the need for a more secure financial base—a degree of security primarily associated with public higher education. The result is the model of tuition support and other base budget funding that New York provides through its enlightened legislation each year.

Students of such matters should be encouraged to follow these trends and to project alternative sets of consequences. It may be that foundations can be most helpful in a mediating and convening capacity, along with other interested but concerned bystanders. Our foundation's role thus far has been to encourage continuing dialogue and the development of reliable empirical information that policymakers may draw upon with confidence. We are unlikely to go beyond that.

The third issue—the changing demographic profile of American society and education—is the one that most intrigues us at the moment, although being a long-term problem it is probably least urgent from your point of view. It also has two aspects, the first educational, the second more broadly cultural and social. It comes to our attention because we have a program in elementary and secondary education and because we have an interest in "social thought and discourse."

We are persuaded that the quality of higher education is eroding from below. The quality of learning varies dramatically among ethnic minorities, but especially among those groups in which the population is growing most rapidly.

Some of us believe that there is an opportunity over the next few years to address some of the most serious issues facing pre-college education. The short-term costs involved are such that questions of political will must be considered.

What is most important is that we know what we are talking about. Important information is now available about student performance and about what takes place in the school that policymakers have lacked in the past. We need to expand that information and then to interpret it with great care.

Similar work will then be necessary at the higher education level. My principal associate in these matters, Scott Miller, believes that we need a massive study of higher education analogous to John Goodlad's study of the elementary and secondary system: A Place Called School [1] should be followed by A Place Called College.

The second aspect of this issue is the rapidly changing ethnic profile of American society. There are profound changes in age groups, geographical changes related to long-term restructuring of the economy, the continuing impact of technology on birth rates. Beyond these are changes in the relative position and influence of ethnic groups, including the relative decline of the Anglo-European group that has dominated American life for more than two centuries.

These changes are reflected in empirical data that are becoming increasingly familiar to all of us. What is stickiest, however, is not the empirical but the normative. These changes will one day begin to add even greater complexity to the question, What should be taught? That question is even more complicated than it was almost 60 years ago, when Charles Beard and some others published a book entitled Whither Mankind? Everett Dean Martin, who wrote the essay on education, complained that "There are few places in America where anything may be mentioned in the public school that is not displeasing to Methodist preachers, the Catholic Irish, leading politicians, grocers, or any organized group."[2]

Martin was also distressed as most of us still are by the polarization of cultural and vocational education: "The practical problem of orientation [to work] cannot be divorced from the end of the struggle for value."

The question of who will receive a liberal arts education as well as advanced professional education becomes an important social issue. Will we be able to bring the young people of greatest promise from minority groups into the mainstream of the society on something approximating equal terms? Thus far we haven't done very well, in spite of our good intentions.

The long-term question is what we should be teaching teachers to teach children not yet born. What do we now believe it is most important to pass on to them? Skills and methods, without content? Which content?

Were we to ascertain among ourselves that the most important obligation we have to future generations, whatever their ethnic makeup, is to pass on a free, open, and democratic society, what would we teach? What are the values of the rising non-Western ethnic groups? What are they most likely to contribute to the mix of values?

These three issues—tax reform, governance, the changing character of American society—are intended to show some interrelationship. Each one requires more study, more information, more analysis. Each one involves issues of governance, of who will make which decisions about what is taught and learned, and to whom. Each one raises long-term consequences, some of them touching on our most basic values.

The frustration of being a president is knowing that all those other people out there are worrying, talking, and arguing about those issues, while you're trapped at your desk or at a head table someplace, worrying about budgets, drug abuse, athletics, and labor contracts. Not only that, those other people don't even have to come to conclusions, to make decisions, and to suffer the consequences. They can worry about 2015 A.D. without any concern for 1988 or 1991, while your only concern with 2015 A.D. is written into a construction financing agreement.

Perhaps one thing we can do is worry about you, at least part of the time: what you think is most important, how you think you can be of greatest service, how some modest financial help can push things along.

[1] John Goodlad, A Place Called School, McGraw Hill, 1983. [Back to Text]

[2] Charles A. Beard, ed., Whither Mankind: A Panorama of Modern Civilization, Longmans, Green, 1928, p. 370. [Back to Text]