G. E. B.'s Q. E. D.

Most spendthrift of U. S. foundations has been the General Education Board, which John Davison Rockefeller established in 1902 for "the promotion of education within the U. S. without distinction of race, sex or creed." By last December it had spent $255,334,670. Since 1920 its trustees, believing the future "will find means to provide for itself," have been giving away the principal as well as the income of this fund.* Last week President Raymond Elaine Fosdick reported that the General Education Board has only $8,700,000 still unpledged, will soon be liquidated.

Medical schools have been the chief objects of G. E. B.'s philanthropy, to the tune of $89,000,000. Vanderbilt's got over $15,000,000, University of Chicago's nearly $11,000,000. Others: Johns Hopkins, Cornell, Washington University (St. Louis), Yale. Harvard, Columbia. To liberal arts colleges, G. E. B. has given $68,000,000; for Negro education, $40,000,000; for special educational programs, $53,000,000. By stipulating that its gifts be matched by other donors, it stimulated donations totaling $400,000,000 to U. S. higher education.

More significant for the future than its vast gifts to higher education, however, are the experiments G. E. B. has subsidized in elementary and secondary schools.

Through the Progressive Education Association, it is financing films and radio programs on social problems, creating a new high-school curriculum pointed toward social change. In 1913 the huge Rockefeller and Carnegie foundations were investigated by a suspicious Congress. But today critics who looked the Rockefeller gift horse in the mouth in 1913 are sorry to lose the old animal, for G. E. B. has written its Q. E. D. under many a progressive idea.

* As have most (66%) new foundations in recent years.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.