The Role of the Foundations

Abstract

Foundation encouragement and support of the development of non-Western studies in American higher educa tion has been crucial if not decisive. Beginning with the modest pioneer grants of the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1930's in support of language and area programs, the foundation contribution to this revolutionary educational advance has steadily increased decade by decade and has helped universities more effectively to meet the ever-rising demand for competent personnel and for more and better knowledge. Of the many foundations, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, and especially the Ford Foundation have contributed the lion's share in support of graduate training and research programs at major universities, of the recruitment and training of graduate students through national fellowship programs, of research by individual scholars and by groups of them, and of efforts by undergraduate colleges to add non-Western studies to the mainstream of liberal learning. The cumulative contribution of these three foundations and others has been indeed impressive, but, despite substantial progress in the development of resources, the gap is widening instead of narrowing between the demands of American society for more well-trained personnel and for new kinds of knowledge and the capacity of American higher education to supply them. The challenge to the foundations, national as well as local, is greater today than ever before.