Wall Street Journal - December 4, 2008
Robert A. Guth, rob.guth@wsj.com

In a speech Wednesday, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp. and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation offered an upbeat vision of the future, making connections between the current economic dark times and the inflationary 1970s, which gave rise to the information-technology boom that fueled Microsoft and his own wealth. "Difficult times can launch great ideas," Mr. Gates said, speaking to students and faculty at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Bill Gates called for the federal government to take a more active role in education in a speech Wednesday at George Washington University in Washington.

Among his proposals is a more active role by the government in education. "If the federal government becomes a dynamic agent of school reform, it will help bring us out of the downturn better off than when we went in," Mr. Gates said.

One education expert said that Mr. Gates's proposals are unlikely to be followed, given the other priorities of the U.S. government as it grapples with the economic meltdown. "Bill Gates's speech is essentially advocating a completely different role for the federal government than it's ever had," said Tom Loveless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "It urges an expansion of that role at the very time that that's least likely to occur."

Mr. Gates also urged broad support for President-elect Barack Obama's pledge during the campaign to double U.S. foreign aid to $50 billion by 2012. "Since then, of course, we've been hit by the financial crisis, which has opened up a huge budget deficit and changed some people's view of what we can afford," Mr. Gates said. "If we can support the president as he stands by his pledge to the poorest nations -- even in the face of our own financial crisis -- it will make a phenomenal statement about the kind of partner America plans to be in the world."

Mr. Gates's comments are part of a coming-out of the software mogul as a more public voice for social change. As co-chair of the world's largest private philanthropy, Mr. Gates has a bully pulpit to push for changes in areas where his foundation has chosen to invest its money, which include U.S. education, global health and development in poor countries.

In the past few years, Mr. Gates has used a series of speeches to try to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS, the gap between rich and poor countries and the need for corporations to put more focus on products and services that can help the poor. Philanthropic foundations like Mr. Gates's charity are barred from lobbying, so Mr. Gates uses the speeches to promote the interest of his foundation and its grantees to government leaders and the general public.

The speech Wednesday came as the financial crisis has decimated the endowments that feed many nonprofits and has strained many government-supported programs. Mr. Gates's own philanthropy has seen its endowment size fall, though the foundation next year will still increase its disbursements.

Mr. Gates's comments highlighted how crucial government funding and cooperation will be for the Gates Foundation to achieve his aims. The foundation next year will spend on its programs well over $3 billion, a huge sum by philanthropic measures, but small compared with government spending in similar areas.

The risk now, Mr. Gates noted, was that government funding for education and oversees development will be hit amid the current economic turmoil. "In a crisis, there is always a risk that you take your eyes off the future -- and you sacrifice long-term investments for near-term gains," Mr. Gates said. "In my view, you have to seek both."

Mr. Gates called for a distinctively different role of the federal government in education, which is largely handled and funded by state and local governments. "The federal government can make a huge difference here," he said.

Specifically, Mr. Gates called for federal incentives to boost recruitment and retention of effective teachers, to align state standards with top international standards, to reward college graduates and to push school overhaul through performance measures.

He said that state and local governments could use aid from the federal stimulus package to offset education-funding cuts or tuition increases that are often used to balance budgets in a recession. The infusion of federal money could benefit community colleges, he said. "Overall, this approach would help make sure that state and local budget pressure doesn't reduce the number of people who get postsecondary degrees during the downturn," he said.

In foreign aid, Mr. Gates said the current economic turmoil provides a chance to cut some aid programs while expanding others. "We need to make the most of this downturn and the budget scrutiny that comes with it," he said.

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