Ford Foundation to restart funding university programmes

$600m-a-year funder U-turns on its controversial decision to stop funding education

The Ford Foundation, the United States’ second-largest philanthropic research funder, will start devoting some of its $600-million annual budget to fund university programmes on the public interest in technologies, its president has said.

It will be a return to higher education for the foundation, which was set up in 1936 to fund “scientific, educational and charitable purposes” but has in recent years moved away from science and education.