Industry to the Rescue

In Cleveland last week a group of presidents and trustees assembled from small colleges all over Ohio set out on a special mission. During the next few days, they will call on 150 local businessmen, and for each they had the same appeal. Its gist: Ohio's private colleges need the help of Ohio industry if they are to survive.

The task force of presidents and trustees actually represents 19 different campuses.* Their Cleveland calls are only the start of a statewide fund-raising campaign to meet the $1,000,000 deficit the colleges expect this year. But far more important than their strategy is their target. Like deficit-ridden private colleges throughout the U.S., they are seeking help from the last great reservoir of wealth outside the Federal Government--the private corporations.

The Battle for Dollars. Last week the battle for that wealth was being fought far beyond Ohio's borders. The University of Denver had recently installed ex-President Albert N. Williams of Western Union as a special non-salaried adviser on getting and using business gifts. In Michigan, five small church-related campuses (Adrian, Alma, Hillsdale, Hope and Emmanuel Missionary) had already banded together to raise $500,000 from industrialists. In Indiana eleven more campuses had combined forces for the same purpose. Last week President A.A. Lemieux of Seattle University was trying to set up a similar foundation in Washington.

Over the past few years, such efforts have brought promising results. This year Johns Hopkins University was able to raise $650,000 from Baltimore businessmen, and nearby Goucher College (for women) was doing almost as well. In its 1940 fund-raising campaign Goucher got only $2,500 from industry--1% of what it was after; this year it got $280,000, or 28%. Northwestern University had a similar report: $761,000 in 1950, compared to $89,000 ten years ago.

The University of Pennsylvania has collected $2,250,000 for its development fund from local business and industry since 1948, including such no-strings gifts as $100,000 from Lit Brothers department store.

Even some small campuses are seeing the color of corporate money. Ohio's Wittenberg College has persuaded nearby businesses to finance a series of economics and management classes for their foremen and supervisors. Mills College in California has received $150,000 from corporations--and "that," says President Lynn White Jr., "would have been impossible five years ago."

Strings Attached. In spite of such indications that corporate gifts are rising, U.S. educators in general are still far from rejoicing. U.S. business has only just begun to give, and it is still nowhere near using up its 5% tax deduction for charitable contributions. Manhattan's Commission on Financing Higher Education reported that in 1950 business probably gave $340 million for philanthropic purposes, including gifts to higher education. But that was only seven-tenths of 1% of its total income before taxes.

Even the amount the colleges do get does not always help them directly. Such scholarship programs as Westinghouse Electric's $11,000 fund for bright young scientists may benefit individual students, but they add nothing to the coffers of individual universities. Few corporations have programs like that of the Ford Motor Co., which not only awards scholarships to 70 students, but also gives $500 to each private college the students select.

Few corporations are willing to give money with no strings attached. Except for Ford's scholarships, Detroit's auto industry gives money only to research that will benefit the industry; the Weyerhaeuser Timber Co.'s gifts go into scholarships in forestry. Of Northwestern's $761,000 bonanza, 90% was earmarked for specialized research. Most companies apparently agree with Pittsburgh's Allegheny Ludlum Steel Corp.: "No contributions are made to colleges as such, no matter how good they are, unless we can figure some direct return to us."

Outside Support. But as Ohio's 19 colleges launched their campaign, U.S. educators were beginning to get some powerful support from beyond the campus. Men like General Motor's Alfred P. Sloan Jr. and Frank W. Abrams of Standard Oil (N.J.) have long been trying to persuade their colleagues that industry has a stake in higher education. Last month, at Yale's 250th anniversary, Irving S. Olds, chairman of the board of U.S. Steel, sounded the call again.

"In my opinion," said Olds, "every American business has a direct obligation to support the free, independent, privately endowed colleges and universities . . . And unless it recognizes and meets this obligation, I do not believe it is properly protecting the long-range interests of its stockholders, its employees, and its customers . . . If it is necessary for us to spend millions of dollars to beneficiate the ore which goes into our blast furnaces . . . then why is it not equally our business to develop and improve the quality of the greatest natural resource of all--the human mind?"

-Antioch, Ashland, Bluffton, Capital, Defiance, Denison, Findlay, Heidelberg, Hiram, Kenyon, Lake Erie, Mount Union, Muskingum, Notre Dame College, Oberlin, Ohio Wesleyan, Otterbein, Western and Wooster.

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