Funding the Future

This historical overview of philanthropy’s impact on higher education offers both inspiration and warnings for the future. A thoughtful, comprehensive and even-handed account, it will be a welcome resource for those on both sides of the relationship, as well as for others concerned with how to improve the quality of education in our nation. -- Judith Shapiro, president, The Teagle Foundation; president and professor of anthropology emerita, Barnard College
Writing both as an historian and as a major figure in foundation philanthropy, Bernstein traces the role twentieth century foundations played in developing the hallmark strengths of U.S. higher education — especially its world-wide standing as a leading source of scholarly creativity, generative social solutions, and the expansion of educational access for  women and minorities. But she also boldly tracks the role foundations are playing today — both on campus and in policy priorities — in what many see as the corporatization of higher education. Current developments illustrate a  metrics-minded  focus on degree production and economic “return on investment” rather than the quality of learning, democracy’s return on the expansion of knowledge, inclusive excellence, and social justice. I  hope that Bernstein’s sober critique will prompt wide-spread philanthropic re-engagement with the role twenty-first century foundations may yet play in creating new connections across scholarship, faculty work, student learning, and democracy’s still-emerging global promise. -- Carol Geary Schneider, president, Association of American Colleges and Universities
Alison Bernstein is one of the nation’s most experienced and foresighted philanthropy leaders in the field of higher education. This book is an eloquent and timely review of where we’ve been in higher education philanthropy, where we are headed, and why this work is more important than ever. Bernstein’s provocative insights and recommendations should be required reading for all of us who have the privilege of working to advance the important economic, social, and cultural benefits that come from the nation’s higher education system. -- Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO, Lumina Foundation
Published at a time when higher education is under intense scrutiny, Alison Bernstein’s comprehensive analysis of the history and future of philanthropic support combines a seasoned practitioner’s insight and passion with astute reflection on existing scholarship. Student access increased and the curriculum broadened, she notes in this provocative study, as the source of largesse migrated from individual donors and church subsidies to secular foundations. These benefactors once used incentives to demonstrate the viability of inclusive reforms, proposed or at least welcomed by the colleges. But, Bernstein asserts, today’s largest foundations challenge, rather than support, the self-defined missions of postsecondary institutions. Higher education, she concludes in this important book, may therefore be losing a key ally at a time of great need. -- Harold Wechsler, University of Rochester