Reading the minutes from the American Enterprise Association (as AEI was called until 1962) board meetings in the mid-1950s, it was clear that an internal debate was well underway about federal aid to education. The impetus for greater federal involvement came from public perception at the time that the Soviet Union was overtaking the US in scientific pursuits. Some thought this necessitated a greater federal role to remedy the situation.
Pursuing this query, AEI issued a number of studies, including several that garnered widespread press coverage. One in particular, coauthored by George Benson, president of Claremont Men’s College, got a four-column spread in the New York Times. Benson’s study objected to the four-year funding plan for thousands of scholarships and fellowships in science, mathematics, and foreign languages and the plan to provide federal funds for college facilities. With much foresight, Benson and other AEI education scholars argued that it would be hard to reverse the federal largesse once it started.
The New York Times story cited objections to Benson’s position from the American Council of Education that favored the scholarships as an extension of the GI bill, though many of its members favored only needs-based help. The National Education Association and the US Office of Education, according to the Times, had “few if any qualms about possible federal control or federal interference.” Benson and his colleagues had some sympathy for tax concessions for college students to pay for their own educations, but argued that “any national grant is a camel’s nose in education’s tent. Both history and folklore suggest that the camel will eventually take over.”
We see how this debate and AEI’s contributions to it continue to this day. Learn more about the current research being conducted by AEI’s Education Policy Team, and get to know the scholars.
AEI Education Scholars
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