Mike Simpson posts a history of Eli Broad, a billionaire who was convinced that education could be improved by the use of business mindset. His influence has been far-reaching and destructive.
There’s a particular kind of audacity required to spend a quarter-century systematically dismantling public education, leave a trail of federal indictments, billion-dollar procurement disasters, and devastated communities in your wake — and then get your name engraved on a building at Yale University. That, in essence, is the story of Eli Broad, the Broad Academy, and its reincarnation as The Broad Center at Yale School of Management. If you were hoping the death of Eli Broad in 2021 would finally close this chapter of American education history, well — ghosts don’t follow rules. And this one has a $100 million endowment.
Part I: Venture Philanthropy — When Billionaires Play School
Let’s start with the concept that makes all of this possible: “venture philanthropy.” It sounds benign — even noble. In practice, it means a billionaire who made his fortune in housing construction (KB Home) and insurance (SunAmerica) decided he understood public education better than educators, parents, communities, or — heaven forbid — children.
Eli Broad’s core thesis, launched formally in 2002 with the Broad Superintendents Academy (BSA), was elegantly simple and catastrophically wrong: public school systems are just badly managed corporations, and what they need is corporate managers.
Not teachers. Not child psychologists. Not community leaders. Corporate managers. Preferably ones with MBAs, military command experience, or backgrounds in supply-chain logistics. Because nothing says “I understand the developmental needs of a seven-year-old” quite like a background in restructuring defense procurement contracts.
The curriculum reflected this philosophy with almost comedic precision:
- 10% — Actual education: pedagogy, curriculum, child development
- 90% — Corporate operational reform: fiscal optimization, data-driven accountability, labor relations, and what the Academy euphemistically called “reform accelerators” — which, translated from the original MBA-speak, meant privatization strategies
The program was free to participants — tuition, travel, lodging, all covered. Because when you’re deploying an ideological army, you don’t charge the soldiers.