Education: Uncle Andrew and Uncle Sam

The Carnegie Corp. is no longer U.S. higher education's richest rich uncle. Uncle Andrew has been replaced by Uncle Sam.

According to the corporation's annual report, the late steel master Andrew Carnegie's onetime average $6,000,000 annual largess to U.S. colleges and universities, which once constituted 6.6% of their total income, has now shrunk to a piddling $58,000 (about .009%). One reason was that the corporation diverted much of its income to the Red Cross, the National War Fund and international-relations projects. Another was that U.S. colleges and universities are much richer than they used to be. In a typical recent year (1940),...