Why has public belief in universities been haemorrhaging?
Nathan M Greenfield 20 November 2021
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20211118103250672
The red flag went up on page five, when Stephen M Gavazzi and E Gordon Gee wrote that their research was underwritten by a grant from the Charles Koch Foundation. Founded by oil man Charles Koch, the foundation is famous for its libertarian views and for supporting the Law and Economics Center at George Mason University in Virginia, which hosts corporate-backed ‘free market’ educational workshops for federal and state judges and attorneys general.
the Morrill Land Grant College Act
Both Gavazzi and Gee know that Republicans and others made the same complaint about university students in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Yet, as soon as they’d handed in their last essays replete with approving references to Karl Marx, Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida, these cohorts applied en masse for jobs on Wall Street or later to the companies that grew wealthy during the dot-com boom.
Koch Foundation and Others Fund ASU’s Higher Ed ‘Redesign’
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/09/08/koch-foundation-and-others-fund-asus-higher-ed-redesign
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Here are some excerpts regarding Koch brothers’ attempts to influence higher education:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/8/9/1230049/-Koch-Brothers-Influence-Peddling-Is-Your-Alma-Mater-on-the-List
The Charles G. Koch Foundation offered to give the university $1.5 million to hire two assistant professors and fund fellowships and undergraduate curriculum on free-enterprise topics.
“In exchange for his ‘gift,’ the donor got to assign specific readings, select speakers brought to campus and instruct them with regard to the focus of their lectures, shape the curriculum with new courses and specify the number of students in the courses, name the program’s director, and initiate a student club.”
How the Koch Brothers Are Influencing U.S. Colleges
The Kochs educational giving, while rarefied, isn’t the most abundant in the United States.
Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel, with his wife Betty, this year pledged $100 million to the California Institute of Technology—and offered to let the school to
spend it as it sees fit.
At the
College of Charleston in South Carolina, for example,
documents show the foundation wanted more than just academic excellence for its money. It wanted information about students it could potentially use for its own benefit
Among the proposed conditions: Teachings must align with the libertarian economic philosophy of Charles Koch, the Charles Koch Foundation would maintain partial control over faculty hiring and the chairman of the school’s economics department—a prominent economic theorist—must stay in place for another three years despite his plans to step down.
Florida State University ultimately didn’t agree to the initial requests when, in 2008, it reached a funding agreement with the foundation. It’s also tightened and clarified policies that affect private donors’ contributions to the university.
To Charles Koch, Universities Are Propaganda Machines
