195 1 year, the Ford foundation established two institutions: the education promotion fund and the adult education fund. In the two years of 195 1- 1953, 1 billion dollars were allocated. The idea of "Education Promotion Fund" came from hutchins, the president of the University of Chicago for 22 years, when he was a part-time director of the Ford Foundation. Hutchins is not only a famous educator, but also an open-minded educational reformer. Under his influence, this fund not only promotes education, but also devotes itself to reforming American education. From the use of its funds, we can see its thinking:1951-1954,28 million dollars is used for education, of which 1 1 10,000 dollars is used for middle school teachers' bonuses, not for funding scientific research projects, but for giving them a paid vacation for one year to decide freely. In addition,170,000 USD is used for the five-year innovation plan. Hutchins believes that the common faults of American teachers are that their teaching skills are more than their knowledge, and their knowledge is too narrow and limited to their professional knowledge. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen general humanities education. The content of this plan is to change the practice of teacher training in traditional normal universities, so that students can take basic courses of arts and sciences in four years and train teaching majors in the fifth year, similar to the last year of medical college. The fund's donation is used in the last year, either to support students who can't afford tuition fees or to support schools that accept internships. The plan was controversial in the education field at that time. Because it embodies the concept of "generalist education" relative to practical education, some people criticize it as "returning to18th century". But from a practical point of view, it also meets the needs of the shortage of teachers caused by the sharp rise of birth rate after the war. According to this plan, ordinary college students who have not graduated from normal university can also serve as teachers after one year of training. The content of the Five-Year Plan also includes subsidizing hundreds of middle school students with extraordinary intelligence to skip the last two grades and go directly to college every year. This is just a combination of hutchins's thought of teaching students in accordance with their aptitude and the actual situation at that time: at that time, American middle schools were overcrowded, but universities lacked students because of the conscription system.

The fund also supports other experimental projects of education reform, such as giving 300,000 US dollars to local education committees to study how to enhance the attractiveness of public schools to students; Let dozens of universities make a survey on their administrative management and teaching objectives, and study how to connect the last two years of middle school with the first two years of university; A group of middle school teachers are equipped with classroom assistants to share the daily work, so as to increase the number of students that each teacher can manage (this is also to solve the problem of insufficient teachers) and so on. Another project worth mentioning is to study the issue of desegregation in schools. It was quite advanced to put this issue on the agenda in the early 1950s. As will be mentioned below, the Ford Foundation pays more attention to racial issues, which has always been its characteristic. The purpose of the fund is to cultivate "mature, wise, responsible citizens who can participate in a free society and have brains". Under this project,1951-1955 spent a total of 25 million dollars, of which 1/3 was used to develop TV broadcasting education, and 2/3 donated various organizations, institutions, activities and materials considered to be related to adult education. The seminar funded by the fund is completely different from the cram school that usually teaches some knowledge and skills, but it is somewhat similar to the political study seminar. The most generous organization is the American Foundation for Political Education, one of whose tasks is to organize world political seminars. This seminar is said to let ordinary citizens spend their spare time on serious and beneficial pursuits and stay away from boring entertainment programs. It is almost impossible to evaluate the success of this project. After 1955, the Ford Foundation changed its practice and directly managed the funds for radio and television education, greatly reducing the funds for various scattered seminars. "Adult Education Fund" gradually faded out.

Subsequent presidents continued to focus on education, and even decided that the Ford Foundation was an education foundation, which also paid equal attention to popularization and improvement, and highlighted the key points in turn according to the understanding of previous presidents. In the 1960s, special attention was paid to teacher training. More than 60 colleges and universities allocated huge sums of money as scholarships for normal students, which strengthened normal education for dozens of universities and improved teaching quality. Ford and Carnegie Foundation also jointly established the National Scholarship Fund, which is considered to be the largest university scholarship program in American history. In addition, a teaching equipment laboratory has been established, which specializes in experiments and designing various new school equipment and teaching tools, and has achieved fruitful results.