Bill Gates expands influence — and money — into higher education
Bill Gates (Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images)
For years, Bill Gates has exercisedextraordinary influence in shaping modern K-12 school reform to his liking, leveraging cash from his vast Microsoft fortune to drive the public agenda — and taxpayer funds – toward standardized test-based accountability.
Now, the Chronicle of Higher Educationhas exposed how he is doing the same thing in higher education: spending his own money to remake the system.
In a package of stories, the Chronicle makes clear how Gates has used his money to change higher education into one that is focused on getting more students degrees faster through technology and what is called “competency-based learning,” which in part rewards students for what they know rather than for how many credits they take in college. His vision includes ways to measure everything, largely through testing.
Critics say this vision of higher education is aimed at getting students ready for jobs rather than giving them a broad education; that it, along with other reform efforts he has funded, are not based in research but rather in his corporate-based idea of how schools should run; and that Gates has been so dominant in the reform debate that opponents have had difficulty getting their voices heard.
One story titled “The Gates Effect” reports that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent $472 million on higher education since 2006 — with the vast majority since 2008 — on this agenda, including money to media organizations “to keep its reform