When Bill Gates puts a huge chunk of his fortune into the American educational system, a few things happen: Schools receive funding they desperately need, educational policy is fundamentally corrupted, Bill Gates receives extensive attention and praise and Bill Gates’ lifestyle stays exactly the same.
That Bill Gates is willing to donate his excess money doesn’t indicate that Bill Gates has any idea what he’s talking about — he doesn’t — or that Bill Gates should have any role in forming educational policy — he shouldn’t.
And yet Bill Gates puts hundreds of millions of dollars into paying teachers based on test scores, desperate school districts grab onto the money, and the worst idea in American education policy -- endless standardized testing -- marches onward.
It’s great Bill Gates’ money is paying for education instead of sitting in a vault somewhere, but there are balances and trade-offs. If we let the dollars of the wealthy force us ever closer to the abyss of standardized test-driven schools, we as a society lose something valuable. We have to ask ourselves whether Gates and his ilk should be allowed to impose their agenda by virtue of having money.
Brown University has a Bill Gates problem. We decided long ago the governance of Brown was for sale to the highest bidder, which is why exactly half of the Corporation’s trustees and fellows are wealthy financiers. Like Bill Gates, these people have given away thousands and millions and, in the case of esteemed trustee, multibillionaire and Securities and Exchange Commission insider trading person of interest Steven Cohen P’08 P’16, billions of dollars. Like Bill Gates, they are not necessarily benevolent or wise or good at running a university just because they gave away some percentage of their money.
The Corporation places a higher priority on creating a glitzy and expanding university than on creating an affordable and diverse university. It shows disregard for its workers and graduate students. It’s worth thinking about whether the shared affluence of most Corporation members is related. The trustees aren’t evil — they aren’t bad people — but the bulk of them come from the same place with the same perspective. Filling our governing body with people coming from a single background — the financial industry — is a bad idea and can be traced back to this fallacy that donating a pile of money qualifies anyone for anything. Our “money-for-power” governance scheme results in some seriously misplaced priorities.
Rhode Island has a Bill Gates problem. While the state’s wealthy cannot yet directly buy seats in the state legislature, the business community’s wealth and influence have still managed to pollute public policy. Witness the shift of focus away from the state’s persistently underfunded public universities and colleges and toward so-called “job training programs” funded by a combination of public and private money. We retain the portion of higher education that benefits the wealthy: creating a supply of well-trained workers. We neglect the other piece — creating literate, better-educated citizens and all the other important things a liberal education is supposed to do. We churn out workers and abandon liberal education. This is just one example of the money-for-policy swaps that occur all the time within governments across the country. It’s generally not a nefarious process. It’s just an unjust and undemocratic way to make public policy.
Then there are campaign contributions — the more unsavory Bill Gates problem facing state, local and federal governments. With campaign contributions, the public benefit is even lower and the public cost is even higher. We get well-funded political campaigns and a steady stream of 30-second ads, and we lose a democratic system of government. This is a more obviously corrupt instance, as the wealthy benefactors are directly enriching themselves by dismantling regulations and winning lucrative government contracts. But Bill Gates buying influence over education policy and a defense contractor buying a House seat differ only by degree.
There is a school of thought that claims none of this is a problem — that the interests of the business community are our interests, the perspective of Wall Street is our perspective. Those of us who don’t buy it need to recognize the pitfalls inherent in the charity of the rich. Brown should raise money without using its own governance as a bargaining chip. Governments should raise money through taxes, not through voluntary handouts from the rich that in turn pollute democracy.
We all can benefit from the charity of the wealthy, and they should be encouraged to give. But they should not be permitted to buy our institutions.
Daniel Moraff ’14 can be reached at daniel_moraff@brown.edu.
ADVERTISEMENT
