Cutting Back at Ford

For years the Ford Foundation has lived beyond its means: total grants have exceeded income by more than $1 billion, and foundation officials have had to dip into capital assets--consisting mostly of Ford Motor Co. stock--to make up the difference. Now Ford has decided to retrench.

In his first annual report since moving to Ford from the White House, President McGeorge Bundy last week served notice that the foundation was cutting back its grants from the current annual rate of $362 million to around $200 million, which would still be about $40 million in excess of this year's estimated income. Those who have benefited most from Ford generosity--U.S. colleges and universities--will be hardest hit, though they still remain high on the foundation's list of priorities. One program that may end is the matching of capital grants, under which 80 colleges and universities received $316 million over the past six years for such purposes as plant expansion and salary boosts.

The change in foundation policy, said Bundy, was dictated by the realization that even if Ford gave away its entire $2.5 billion endowment, it could not meet the schools' immense and growing needs for more funds. He argued that more needs to be done by individuals and private corporations, who are not giving "what they could and should" to higher education. Bundy criticized the timidity of college trustees for not investing their $12 billion in endowments more imaginatively to achieve greater income and growth.

Bundy also favored more federal assistance to higher education, saying that it is "good, and needed--and should grow" from last year's total of $4 billion. He sees the Ford Foundation's own role as that of an experimenter, innovator and catalyst, doing what others are not equipped to do. Foundations, says Bundy, should "search for leverage in which national resources can be more effectively put to work on a problem." One new area of experimentation under study at Ford is a long-term program to reform graduate education, involving the ten "pacesetting" universities that award the majority of Ph.D.s in the social sciences and humanities.

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