1941: Sloan Foundation

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Inc., expanded during 1941 its aid to schools and colleges in developing new 'patterns' in economic education. Grants amounting to $333,940 were made to fifteen educational institutions in the eleven months up to Dec. 1, 1941, thus bringing the Foundation's total gifts since its organization in 1936 to $1,444,335.

The Foundation in 1941 made grants to four institutions to teach low-income groups how to improve their own living conditions. It enabled the Universities of Florida and Kentucky to expand experiments in this field and aided the University of Vermont and Pennsylvania State College to start similar projects.

At the same time, the Foundation continued its support of several programs in adult economic education. These included the University of Chicago Round Table of the Air, a weekly radio discussion of national and international questions; the Tax Institute of the University of Pennsylvania, which issues unbiased information in regard to local, state, and Federal taxes: and the Public Affairs pamphlets, containing popular digests of current economic research, brought out by the Public Affairs Committee of New York. Consumer education for adults, as well as for college and high school students, was furthered with Foundation aid by the Institute for Consumer Education at Stephens College, a junior college for women at Columbia, Mo.

Moreover, both at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at the University of Denver, the Foundation maintains a special group of ten competitive fellowships offered to college graduates. At M.I.T. these are awarded to young industrial executives for a year's study of social and economic conditions. At Denver the fellowships provide training for a new profession — appraiser of local government — through an eighteen-month course in taxation and public expenditures.

To explore the possibilities of motion pictures as a vehicle for economic education, the Foundation during 1941 aided experiments in film production, distribution, and research. To the Foreign Policy Association it made a grant to produce a film on Latin-American trade relations. Distribution of sound films on economic subjects was encouraged by a gift to the New York University Film Library. Audience reactions to such pictures were studied at the Institute for Economic Education of Bard College of Columbia University.

The Foundation is a non-profit membership corporation organized under the laws of Delaware. Its income comes from an endowment established by Mr. Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., the motor car magnate, and Mrs. Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., and from other gifts by him and his wife.