CAE: A Brief History of CAE
Originally known as the Council for Financial Aid to Education, CAE was established by a group of enlightened business executives under the leadership of Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. (General Motors), Frank W. Abrams (Exxon Corporation), and Irving S. Olds (United States Steel Corporation) to advance corporate support of higher education. CAE's primary purpose was: "To promote a better understanding of the substantial contribution which higher education makes to the effectiveness, skill, growth, and success of American business, and to the development of the country." CAE was the first organization in the US to regularly provide statistical analyses of private giving to higher education on a national basis. From 1955 to 1989 CAE had a well-known national advertising campaign with the Ad Council called "Give to the College of Your Choice" that was credited for great increases in higher education donations in the period. Also during this time, CAE produced a short film called "Education is Everybody's Business" that was aired for several years on national television. CAE has published a number of reports over the years on corporate giving trends, and a "how-to" series - such as guides on setting up matching gifts programs and developing and managing corporate scholarship programs. CAE's most recent report, Intelligent Giving: Insights and Strategies for Higher Education Donors (2002), provides an intellectual framework for guiding prospective major donors in giving more effectively to higher education. In 1996, CAE gained national attention when it warned of a potential fiscal crisis that could deny millions of Americans access to higher education. The CAE report, Breaking the Social Contract: The Fiscal Crisis in Higher Education (1996), was based on a two-year study prepared by its national commission co-chaired by Joseph Dionne (then chairman and CEO of The McGraw-Hill Companies) and Thomas Kean (former governor of New Jersey). The commission called upon the nation to address rising costs and shrinking state funds, and CAE carried on the commission's message through regional meetings throughout the United States. As a result of these regional meetings, CAE began to serve as a leading resource for analysis, strategic planning, and policy recommendations for state higher education systems and government leaders seeking to improve performance. CAE conducted major strategic planning work for state higher education systems in California, Nevada and Texas, and for the City University of New York (CUNY), the largest urban public higher education system in the country: In Texas, CAE conducted a study for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board that helped develop a 10-year master plan for Texas higher education (for ordering info only). CAE provided a needs-analysis of the state's regional higher education capacity and its relationship to projected regional economic development. In 1998, CAE was hired by the Mayor's Task Force on the City University of New York (CUNY) to evaluate the curriculum, mission and governance structure of the CUNY system, the nation's largest urban public university system. [The Governance of the City University of New York; CUNY's Testing Program]. CAE's president, Roger Benjamin served as the executive director of the task force, which was chaired by Benno Schmidt, Chairman of the Edison Schools and the former president of Yale University. In the fall of 2000, CAE launched the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) Project. |
