A major
review of objectives and programs of this division during 1971 led
to a wider commitment to help expand educational opportunities for
America's racial and cultural minorities.
The work of
the Division of Education and Research is now organized in an
Office of Public Education and an Office of Higher Education and
Research. The latter is responsible for some two-thirds of the
division's budget, and the trustees this year approved a sharp
increase in the proportion of its funds devoted to minorities.
About 75 per cent—or a total of $100 million over the next
six years—will be granted to increase minority opportunities
in higher education. The principal focus of the Public Education
office, which works on problems of elementary and secondary
schools, also is the educational needs of minority students.
These
choices flow in part from an examination of competing priorities in
American education. Although considerable progress has been made in
recent years in reducing the educational deprivation of minority
youth, especially the black minority, inequality of educational
opportunity is still severe.
Another
underlying proposition—one both obvious yet too often
overlooked—is that the expansion of opportunity for
minorities is in the fundamental interest of the society at large
as well as of those directly assisted.
The work of
the division in 1971 illustrates this concern for pluralism and
equal opportunity in education as well as for other problems in
American schools, colleges, and universities.
HIGHER
EDUCATION AND RESEARCH
The policy
decision to increase sharply the proportion of the Education and
Research division's support of higher education for minorities will
of necessity mean a reduction in funds in other areas. Thus, 1971
marked the peak of the Foundation's assistance for management
education in Europe. Also grants under the Foundation's six-year,
$42 million program to assist reform of the doctoral degree will
conclude in 1972. And a program of social science research
fellowships for young faculty members, funded this year at
$693,604, will continue at about one-third the former level.
The
Foundation will also continue, on a somewhat more modest level than
in the last few years, assistance to promising new approaches in
undergraduate and graduate instruction, the financing and
management of colleges and universities, the development of
leadership for higher education, and policy issues affecting the
academic enterprise.
Nearly half
of the $100 million the Foundation will commit over the next six
years for minority opportunities in higher education will be
applied to scholarship and fellowship assistance to American
Indians, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and black Americans.
Most of the rest will be granted to a relatively few traditionally
black private colleges.
Undergraduate Education.
Among the
more modest yet widely noted analyses of higher education published
in 1971 was the so-called Newman Report, the work of an independent
task force initiated by the U.S. Department of Health, Education
and Welfare and financed by the Foundation. Concluding that most
reform attempts "leave unaffected the institutionalized past
decisions as to what higher education is all about," it called for
fundamental changes that eliminate outmoded programs, reflect the
differing needs of students, clarify educational goals, and create
new and different types of institutions.
In this
spirit, several efforts assisted by the Foundation this year seek
wider access to higher education, greater flexibility in
institutional arrangements, and truer measures of intellectual
attainment. Two such patterns are the "university without walls"
and the "external degree." For a "university without walls"
involving twenty colleges and universities in the Midwest and on
the Eastern seaboard, the Foundation granted $400,000 to the Union
for Experimenting Colleges. Participating institutions will award
degrees without requiring students to meet traditional residency
and course conditions. Instead, the program