Bill Gates and Education

Gates Foundation Donates $50 Million to Smithsonian's Youth Access Endowment, Targeting Students in Grades K-12

November 3, 2010

Washington Post - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is giving $50 million to the Smithsonian Institution, the national museum announced late Wednesday.

The money will go principally to the Youth Access Endowment, a new entitly created by the Smithsonian. Gates is giving $30 million of the gift to "reach underserved students" in the United States. The endowment targets students in grades K-12, and will create a series of interactive Web sites and online conferences.

The Gates Foundation, the largest in the world, is known for its worldwide initiatives in health but also concentrates on improving U.S.education, mostly recently starting a drive to improve community college education.

A $10-million portion of the gift will support the strategic plan of Secretary G. Wayne Clough through research and public programs. Clough called the Gates gift "transforming," in a statement released by the museum.

The final $10 million will go to the National Museum of African American History and Culture for its design and construction phase. The museum is scheduled to open on the Mall in 2015.

The Smithsonian has watched its endowment decline during the stock market troubles but the income has started to stabilize. It receives 70 percent of its budget from Congress.

Bill Gates and Education: "Innovation is Your Only Hope"

October 11, 2010

ZDNet Education - The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced Monday that it would be funding a $20 million, multi-year grant program to foster innovation in online instructional tools with a particular focus on community colleges. According to the New York Times, the Foundation will be joined by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and four nonprofit education organizations in using technology to ultimately prepare more students for the high-skill job market.

As Bill Gates described it in a CNET interview,

The people who are going to apply for these grants, they have all been doing interesting stuff. The grant will let them do a little bit more and it will encourage them to come together as a group. The money will help them do more measurement. We think the timing on this is really great and this will be very catalytic.

The first round of RFPs will be focused on “postsecondary online courses, particularly ones tailored for community colleges and low-income young people,” according to the Times report. Another round of RFPs next year will include K-12 schools. Bill Gates, not surprisingly, seems to have the right idea on this:

There are some great laptop schools where things have gone well, and as laptop costs come down, you’ll be hearing more about tablet-type devices, Netbooks, iPads in the classroom.

But it’s the material that shows up on those devices that really counts. That’s where the foundation is focused. We’ll have another RFP early next year that is more focused on K-12 online material.

The community college programs are expected to supplement and differentiate in-class instruction and ensure that more students are motivated to pursue post-secondary education by focusing their efforts on classes that meet their technical and professional needs.

Bill Gates: Online Learning Will Be More Important than Traditional Schools in Five Years

Bill Gates calls the green economy the “biggest economic opportunity in the country,” and his focus on post-secondary online courses in community colleges fits well with the UN Agenda's to layout human settlements in regimented and dense urban areas where cars are a thing of the past and mass transit is the norm. "Intelligent Urbanism advocates integrated transport systems comprising walkways, cycle paths, bus lanes, light rail corridors, under-ground metros and automobile channels. The Principles of Intelligent Urbanism (PIU) accept that the automobile is here to stay, but that it should not be made essential by design. A well-planned metropolis would densify along mass-transit corridors and around major urban hubs. Smaller, yet dense, urban nodes are seen as micro-zones of medium level density, public amenities and pedestrian access. At these points, lower level nodal split will occur, such as between bus loops and cycle tracts. The PIU views nodal-split points as places of urban conviviality and access to services and facilities. Modal split can be between walking, cycling, driving, and mass transit. Bus loops may feed larger rail-based rapid movement corridors. Social and economic infrastructure becomes more intensive as movement corridors become more intense."

October 27, 2010

University of Phoenix - The name Gates is synonymous with the technology revolution. Today, it's at the forefront of another revolution—education. In addition to helping more college students graduate, Bill Gates is predicting that in the near future the web will be the place to learn.

“It will be better than any single university,” he stated at the Techonomy Conference, a four-day event examining the link between technology and the economy.

Gates believes that “place-based” education will be less important going forward because of the logistics and expense of attending traditional universities.

However, one question persists about online learning—does the quality of its education match the quality of traditional “place-based” schools? According to a recent article in Inside Higher Ed, the concerns about online education's quality are unfounded (Wojciechowska, 2010). The article reported on a study conducted by the Education Department which concluded that online schools are just as effective at teaching students as traditional schools where students interact face-to-face with instructors.

If Bill Gates is right, then online learning will be the way to get a quality education in the future.

Making education accessible

Since retiring from the day-to-day management of Microsoft in June 2008, Gates and his wife Melinda have taken on a big challenge—improving life in the United States and the world through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The foundation's focus is on three areas: global health, global development and development in the United States. In line with its motto, “All Lives Have Equal Value,” the organization's focus is on providing underprivileged individuals with the means to pursue better lives.

On Oct. 4, 2010, the foundation issued a press release announcing its newest program, “Completion by Design,” a $35 million program offering grants for community colleges. To be eligible for a grant, colleges must implement programs that address students' needs and help increase graduation rates.

“Most students today who are pursuing an education beyond high school are also balancing the demands of work and family,” Melinda Gates said. “Yet colleges haven't adapted to this new reality” (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2010).

When it comes to addressing working students' needs, online institutions appear to be ahead of the game, with 4.6 million students taking at least one online course during the fall 2008 term, which is nearly a 17% increase over the previous year (Allen & Seaman, 2010). The flexibility of online learning allows students to meet work and family responsibilities. Today, online learning is clearly gaining acceptance since University of Phoenix introduced the concept in 1990.

Providing guidance from the start

Another important aspect of student retention may be providing advice and support to students throughout their college career. According to Hilary Pennington, the Gates Foundation director of education, colleges must change the way they communicate with students.

“Completion by Design aims to get community colleges to restructure how they interact with the majority of their students from the moment they enter the college to the time they graduate to provide them the quickest, straightest path to a degree,” Pennington said. “When that happens, more students finish with a degree, certificate or credential in hand” (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2010).

According to the Gates Foundation, college completion is critical. In its press release, the foundation cites a report by Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce which predicts that by 2018, 63% of jobs will require some level of college education. According to graduation statistics, there won't be enough educated workers to meet this need.

Community colleges currently serve 11 million students. According to the foundation, too many do not finish—stating that just 22% of first-time, full-time students in community college graduate within three years. At this rate of graduation, there will be a shortfall of 3 million educated individuals to fill future jobs. That's why it's critical to make a change now.

The Gates Foundation plans on tracking the initiatives of the community colleges awarded Completion by Design grants, and duplicate the programs that have the greatest success.

Online learning going mainstream

With a call for higher graduation rates, online learning will need to be even more accessible as American colleges address the barriers to graduation that confront today's working student. As Completion by Design begins duplicating the best learning innovations by community colleges, online learning may be a key in expanding access to education and will help boost graduation rates.

Bill Gates was right about the technology revolution—let's hope he's right about education, too. We may be on the brink of making education more readily accessible to students to fill future workforce needs and help us, as a nation, compete globally. It's time to unleash the transforming power of education through the Internet and better more lives.

Gates Foundation Launches $20-Million Effort to Improve Online College Instruction

A $20 million initiative unveiled Monday by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation aims to find new ways to deliver college instruction, using technology to make college learning more effective, and possibly also less expensive.

October 11, 2010

Seattle Times - What if you could watch videos of the world's leading college professors lecture about a difficult subject you were trying to master — online, any time you needed to watch?

That's one of the ideas that could receive funding from a $20 million initiative unveiled Monday by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The initiative aims to find new ways to deliver college instruction, using technology to make college learning more effective, and possibly also less expensive.

The Next Generation Learning Challenge will provide grants to educators and entrepreneurs to develop more fully promising technology tools. Initially, the grants will focus on classes taken by students in higher education, but in later years it will focus on K-12 learning, said Bill Gates, co-chair of the foundation, in a conference call Monday.

Many colleges and universities already are using online learning tools, but they're costly to develop and "many are not that ambitious," Gates said. For example, the courses often don't provide a real-time way to measure whether the student is learning, he said.

Some of the technologies that might be funded under the grant process include increasing the use of "blended" learning, which combines face-to-face instruction with online learning; using digital games, interactive media, simulations and social media to spark interest in learning; supporting "open courseware" for introductory classes such as math, science and English; and using learning analytics, or tests, to monitor student progress in real time.

The initiative is being offered in collaboration with the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and is being led by a nonprofit, EDUCAUSE, which works to advance higher education through the use of information technology. The grants will range in size from $250,000 to $750,000.

The Gates Foundation said that by age 30, fewer than half of all Americans have earned a college degree. For low-income and minority students, the situation is bleaker. Yet by 2018, some studies estimate that careers requiring post-secondary education or training will make up 63 percent of all job openings.

Last week, the Gates Foundation announced a $34.8 million program to help boost community-college graduation rates. The Completion by Design program will award competitive grants to groups of community colleges that come up with new approaches to help community-college students complete their studies.

Gates Foundation Launches $20 Million Fund for Tech Ventures to Improve Education

October 11, 2010

Washington Post - The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced on Monday a $20 million project to fund Internet and other high-tech ventures aimed at boosting the nation's troubling college graduation rates.

Through the use of the Web, social networks, games and gadgets, the foundation said technology provides new opportunities to keep students engaged in their studies and provide more flexibility to attend classes online.

At stake is a brewing educational and economic crisis, the foundation said. Only half of Americans at age 30 have a college degree. But in eight years, about 64 percent of all jobs will require more than a high school diploma.

"American education has been the best in the world, but we’re falling below our own high standards of excellence for high school and college attainment," said Bill Gates, co-chairman of the Gates Foundation, which has put $5 billion into grants to improve education. "We should harness new technologies and innovation to help all students get the education they need to succeed."

It is too early to assess the affect of technology on efforts to improve rates of education. But The Gates Foundation points to some projects that have shown some impact: Carnegie Melon has put many of its classes online. New York City public schools are experimenting with an algorithm to match students with activities that best suit them and online tools to connect teachers with students.

Starting Monday, the Gates Foundation said, it will accept applications for initial awards of $250,000 to $750,000 for the following:

• Increasing the use of blended learning models, which combine face-to-face instruction with online learning activities.

• Deepening students’ learning and engagement through use of interactive applications, such as digital games, interactive video, immersive simulations and social media.

• Supporting the availability of high-quality open courseware, particularly for high-enrollment introductory classes such as math, science, and English, which often have low rates of student success.

• Helping institutions, instructors and students benefit from learning analytics, which can monitor student progress and customize proven supports and interventions.

The deadline to apply is Nov. 17, and awards will be announced next March. The Gates Foundation, with nonprofit EDUCAUSE and the William and Flora Hewlitt Foundation, plans to fund similiar awards every six to 12 months. (disclosure: Melinda Gates sits on the board of The Washington Post Co.).