In higher ed, as the Gates Foundations’ power grows, grumbles do too
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SUMMARY:
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent $472 million on higher education but, according to a report, it’s accumulating critics along with its influence.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is one of the most active nonprofit players in higher education — to the tune of $472 million. But according to an exhaustive special report in The Chronicle for Higher Education this week, its money and advocacy is rubbing many in the academy the wrong way.
Given the scope of its activity and funding, it’s hard for the foundation to not be a target for critics. And it’s been the subject of educational debate in the past: Education historian Diane Ravitch has been among its most vocal detractors of its pro-privatization efforts in K-12 education and, earlier this spring, the Gates Foundation rankled some parents with its new initiative to aggregate mounds of student data with the goal of personalizing learning.
In higher education, the Chronicle reports that the foundation’s approach to the field as “an engineering problem to be solved” is making academics and analysts