The Gates Effect

A look inside the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s $472-million (so far) effort to remake higher education, and at why many in academe are not cheering.

Working alongside the Lumina Foundation and through intermediaries like Complete College America, the foundation has seen unprecedented results.

Major grant makers have synchronized their goals for higher-education reform.

The Gates foundation is notable not only for its size but also for its approach: Define strategic goals, work closely with grantees, and expect measurable results.

The effort is an unusual philanthropic model: It awards money to for-profits as well as nonprofits, and Gates stays engaged even after the grants are given.

Between 2006 and 2012, according to The Chronicle’s analysis, Gates gave $4.7-million in media-related grants to support coverage that included higher education.

The Obama adminisration, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Lumina Foundation all agree: Colleges must produce more graduates, at a lower cost. That alignment in thinking is reflected in the flow of employees among the foundation and the federal government. This year, Mildred Otero, a…

How much have the traditional advantages of family and wealth really changed in the sweepstakes of attending and graduating from college?

Reform efforts that shift the institution of public higher education, but not private higher education, deserve close scrutiny.

The breadth and quantity of money granted by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to higher-education projects vastly outweighs the amounts granted by the two other key supporters of higher-education reform: the Lumina Foundation and The Kresge Foundation. This graphic digs into the foundations’ grants from 2006 through 2011.

The Chronicle has worked with the Gates foundation on two stand-alone Web sites.