Harold Laski, the British political scientist and socialist, published a collection of essays on his extended visit to the United States (The Dangers of Obedience, 1930). Laski was similarly contemptuous of academic kowtowing to wealth, but it was the foundations that caught his attention. Laski satirized the vanity of foundation executives gulled by the flattery of university presidents who were more interested in fund raising than in scholarship. Like Laski, Jacques Barzun, scholar and erstwhile dean, saw foundations in The House of Intellect (1959), as one of the enemies undermining the values of the university. Foundations distorted scholarship by preferring "projects to persons" (p. 180) and thus denigrated the role of the independent scholar. 

None of these criticisms, however often repeated, has slowed the process of cooperation between foundations and universities. They have been allies rather than enemies; the consequences of the partnership have been both good and bad, for the immediate actors as well as for the society as a whole. As social practices go, this one seems to have worked out rather well. 

III 

Given what some scholars have said about philanthropy and higher education, what advice should one give to wealthy people who take their philanthropic responsibilities seriously? If one were to follow Andrew Carnegie and make a list of philanthropic opportunities in higher education, what would they be? We can then ask ourselves what our own priorities are. Carnegie also provides guidance in how to implement the priorities once arrived at by giving us the model of the foundation in different forms (grant making and operating). We can then ask ourselves whether we think the foundation model is the best available or possible.

Foundations have alwae it would be most suitable to invest their money. Foundations will limit themselves to gifts from income; they will seldom make massive reductions in their assets in order to support the things they are interested in. Foundations are often set up to continue indefinitely. (When told that his new foundations were to be established "in perpetuity," John D. Rockefeller is said to have remarked that "Perpetuity is a very long time.") Foundations show the same characteristics as other organizations that persist over time; they become "infused with value." They have the same problem of fidelity to mission as do universities and religious bodies.

For one thing, times change. What began in 1880, say, as a philanthropic attack on the lack of college opportunities for the children of the poor was looked upon differently in 1950 when systems of public higher education were expanding in all directions, and seen differently again in 1990 when even colleges and universities seem unable to serve the children of the poor as well as they serve the children of those who are financially better off. Meanwhile, foundations and their corporate counterparts have recently changed their strategies. Instead of concentrating on scholarships for economically disadvantaged college students they have redirected their resources in significant amounts to reform of the public schools.

Foundations are, on the average, more interested in solving problems than they are in sustaining institutions. Many if not most foundation executives believe that the sustaining funds of higher education are to be sought from individuals, whether in the form of endowments or in the form of annual giving by alumni and parents.

 Foundations are therefore not reliable sources of support for continuing programs in established fields like history or philosophy or even law or medicine. Foundations are still more interested in change than they are in continuity. Foundation executives put a high value on innovation and leverage and dissemination and other devices to make their money have as much influence -- "to go as far" -- as possible.

Foundations thus seek ways to engage the resources of universities more efficiently in doing things that may not have the same priority for the universities themselves. Improving the public schools is but one example. Foundations often discover (or have pressed upon them) needs that have yet not risen in the academic consciousness. One foundation I know has an interest in "immigrant education," a cause for which many academics will have ready sympathy but are ill-prepared to address. Legions of voluntary associations bring both pressure and inspiration to foundations to use foundation influence to get universities to address important issues that are not on the agenda.

At times the universities themselves are the sources of new ideas. A scholar at the University of Iowa (whose field is literature and physics) likens the emergence of new fields of inquiry within the university to the phenomenon of voluntary associations in the society at large. I am myself engaged in an effort to establish a new field of teaching and research, a venture made possible by foundation funds. Foundations thus become allies not with universities as institutional entities but with individual faculty members and groups of scholars. Development officers who have tried to centralize these flows of communication have always failed to do so and have also achieved more animosity than efficiency in the process.

Entrepreneurship in large complex universities has never been limited to presidents and other self-serving, money-grubbing administrators. Faculty entrepreneurship has built observatories, laboratories, library collections, specialized fellowships and assistantships, and a host of other of the amenities of academic life. The direct link between funding, research, and professional achievement inspires much if not most of the widespread character of academic searches for funds from foundations. Universities are much less centralized today than in the past; administrators have much less power than in the past; there is a vastly greater array of potential sources of support to appeal to. I see no reason to believe that anyone will be able to put the genie back in the bottle (or the evils back in Pandora's box).