Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    College Advising
    Serving Higher Ed
    Chronicle Festival 2025
Sign In
News

‘Next Generation’ Grant Program Reveals Hands-On, Corporate Approach

By Goldie Blumenstyk July 14, 2013

Next Generation Learning Challenges, a grant maker created by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with the higher-education technology group Educause and other organizations, is an unusual philanthropic model in at least two ways: how involved the foundation remains after its money has been awarded, and its interest in seeing the money go to for-profit companies as well as nonprofits.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

Next Generation Learning Challenges, a grant maker created by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with the higher-education technology group Educause and other organizations, is an unusual philanthropic model in at least two ways: how involved the foundation remains after its money has been awarded, and its interest in seeing the money go to for-profit companies as well as nonprofits.

Traditionally foundations identify grantees they want to support, award them money, and then monitor their progress from afar through reports. With the Next Generation program, which works to promote two of the foundation’s key goals—to accelerate learning and college-completion rates—through the use of technology, Gates officials have stayed in closer touch. They created a pass-through vehicle within Educause that has allowed them to play a direct role in deciding which individual organizations—and companies—would ultimately receive the foundation’s money.

Related Articles

5942-Gates-Package-Logo

The Gates Effect

How Gates Shapes State Policy

In the Foundation ‘Echo Chamber’Premium Link

New Philanthropy Demands ResultsPremium Link

Grants Show Corporate ApproachPremium Link

Foundation-Supported Media Sets the AgendaPremium Link

Graphic: A Realm of InfluencePremium Link

Commentary

The Gates Foundation’s Uncertain Legacy

Gates May Widen Class Divide

Interactive Data

The Gates Foundation’s Higher-Education Footprint, 2006-11
Explore the breadth and quantity of money granted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to higher-education projects compared with the next two largest supporters of reform: the Lumina Foundation and the Kresge Foundation.

Table: Browse Gates, Lumina, and Kresge Higher-Education Grants, 2006-11

Disclosure

The Chronicle has received Gates Foundation money to support two Web sites. Read More.

Following a winnowing of proposals by Next Generation staff housed at Educause and another by outside review panels, a committee of eight representatives—two from Gates, two from Educause, one from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and one from each of three other partner organizations—decide who will receive grants. (Hewlett participated financially, and voted, on only the first two rounds of grants.)

The pass-through structure of the Next Generation program has made it possible for the Gates foundation to place lots of small bets on many projects—which would otherwise be difficult for a large foundation to manage—and then increase its commitments to the ones it and its partners found most promising.

The program is also distinctive for the way Gates had it bring in outside experts to help vet some proposals for financial feasibility.

Ira Fuchs, a veteran of the foundation field who ran the Next Generation program for Educause until March 2012, says the approach reflects the comfort with corporate culture that he found among the Gates officials working on the project. “Almost to a person, they have Harvard M.B.A.'s, so they think in terms of business,” he said.

Through Next Generation, Gates has awarded grants to nearly seven dozen ventures. “If you’re going somewhere that is cutting edge, it’s helpful to have a ‘thousand flowers bloom’ approach,” says Victor Vuchic, a program officer at the Hewlett foundation who worked with Next Generation. Hewlett kicked in $2-million early on but no longer provides support because it has shifted to other priorities.

Since 2010, the Gates foundation has given nearly $65-million to the Next Generation program. The program has awarded more than $37-million to date. Nearly $24-million of that has gone for programs aimed at lowering the cost of college for needy students, including a new competency-based degree program at Northern Arizona University and a community-college collaboration called Project Kaleidoscope, led by Cerritos College, to help faculty make greater use of open-source textbooks. The rest went to programs promoting “college readiness.”

Kim Thanos, who helps coordinate the colleges’ open-source project through her company, Lumen, says the relationship with Next Generation “feels very entrepreneurial,” with officials acting the way a “very engaged, effective venture-capital” investor would. Program officials don’t micromanage on spending but are very focused on results, she says. Kaleidoscope won an initial $750,000 in the first wave of grants and a follow-up grant of $1.2-million to expand its venture. Now, she says, “at least once a month” she gets a call from an official at Gates or Educause offering to make a useful introduction to a potential partner, resource, or supplier.

As the Next Generation program developed, its criteria grew more precise. Grantees in the second round of “college completion” grants, for example, were given a goal known as 50/5/5. It meant their projects were to create at least six new degree programs where at least 50 percent of students would complete their associate degrees, the average sticker price would be less than $5,000, and the project would serve 5,000 students within five years.

“It was pretty specific,” says Susan Metros, associate vice provost and deputy CIO at the University of Southern California, who chaired one of the outside panels that reviewed the grant proposals. Nonetheless, she says, “within those criteria there were a lot of options.” All the partners agreed to the 50/5/5 goal, but Gates played an important role in developing it, its officials say.

ADVERTISEMENT

Some of the grants have gone to entities that didn’t seem to need the money. The program awarded $300,000, for example, to a venture called New Charter University, which is owned by a company called UniversityNow that has raised at least $21.5-million in venture-capital investment. And barely three months after awarding $750,000 to Carnegie Learning Inc., in 2011, that company was acquired for $75-million by the Apollo Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix.

“We can’t control who gets engulfed by whom,” says Andrew Calkins, deputy director of the Next Generation program. But one of the tenets of the program is that “good ideas come from all kinds of places.”

Most foundations avoid using their tax-advantaged funds for grants to for-profit entities, and a Gates-foundation spokeswoman noted that its grant money officially went to the nonprofit Educause. Still, she said, “we believe innovation is happening in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. Both are necessary.”

Graphic: Through Next Generation Learning Challenges, Gates Money Goes Far

Read other items in The Gates Effect.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
Blumenstyk_Goldie.jpg
About the Author
Goldie Blumenstyk
The veteran reporter Goldie Blumenstyk writes a weekly newsletter, The Edge, about the people, ideas, and trends changing higher education. Find her on Twitter @GoldieStandard. She is also the author of the bestselling book American Higher Education in Crisis? What Everyone Needs to Know.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

More News

Vector illustration of large open scissors  with several workers in seats dangling by white lines
Iced Out
Duke Administrators Accused of Bypassing Shared-Governance Process in Offering Buyouts
Illustration showing money being funnelled into the top of a microscope.
'A New Era'
Higher-Ed Associations Pitch an Alternative to Trump’s Cap on Research Funding
Illustration showing classical columns of various heights, each turning into a stack of coins
Endowment funds
The Nation’s Wealthiest Small Colleges Just Won a Big Tax Exemption
WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES - 2025/04/14: A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator holding a sign with Release Mahmud Khalil written on it, stands in front of the ICE building while joining in a protest. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally in front of the ICE building, demanding freedom for Mahmoud Khalil and all those targeted for speaking out against genocide in Palestine. Protesters demand an end to U.S. complicity and solidarity with the resistance in Gaza. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Campus Activism
An Anonymous Group’s List of Purported Critics of Israel Helped Steer a U.S. Crackdown on Student Activists

From The Review

John T. Scopes as he stood before the judges stand and was sentenced, July 2025.
The Review | Essay
100 Years Ago, the Scopes Monkey Trial Discovered Academic Freedom
By John K. Wilson
Vector illustration of a suited man with a pair of scissors for a tie and an American flag button on his lapel.
The Review | Opinion
A Damaging Endowment Tax Crosses the Finish Line
By Phillip Levine
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan keeps his emotions in check during a news conference, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022 in Charlottesville. Va. Authorities say three people have been killed and two others were wounded in a shooting at the University of Virginia and a student is in custody. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The Review | Opinion
Jim Ryan’s Resignation Is a Warning
By Robert Zaretsky

Upcoming Events

07-31-Turbulent-Workday_assets v2_Plain.png
Keeping Your Institution Moving Forward in Turbulent Times
Ascendium_Housing_Plain.png
What It Really Takes to Serve Students’ Basic Needs: Housing
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin