Dive Brief:
- Wake Forest University business professor Douglas Beets analyzed corporate giving by BB&T bank for the Journal of Academic Ethics and its stipulations about including Ayn Rand’s teachings in courses.
- Inside Higher Ed reports that the paper questions whether tight budgets have contributed to an environment in which administrators are more likely to accept money with ideological strings attached.
- In his study of BB&T’s giving, Beets found the average grant was $1.1 million, often requiring institutions to design a new course that included discussion of "Atlas Shrugged" and sometimes creating new chaired professorships, capitalism centers, or speaker series, among other things.
Dive Insight:
There are some community colleges in Arizona that run entirely without state funding. College and university administrators in certain states have taken to considering their institutions “public” in their name and ideology rather than in their funding model. Even years after economists announced the end of the recession, state governments are still proposing cuts to higher education. Most states are slowly increasing spending in this area, but the upward trajectory is just that — slow.
While BB&T doesn’t award Moral Foundations of Capitalism grants anymore, Beets argues the precedent it set in its corporate giving and the success it had in influencing curricula sets a dangerous precedent for institutions. Where must administrators draw the line?