INVESTING In Futures
ACROSS THE COUNTRY AND RIGHT HERE IN PALM BEACH COUNTY, WEALTHY INDIVIDUALS ARE INFUSING FUNDS INTO EDUCATION WITH THE HOPE OF BENEFITING AND EMPOWERING THE NEXT GENERATION OF LEARNERS
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f money is no object, what becomes your objective for that money? Perhaps you take the Elon Musk route and conquer space travel. Or you follow Mark Cuban’s lead and offer prescription drugs at significantly reduced prices. Maybe you tackle world hunger, make efforts to reduce crime, or attempt to remove “incurable” from a disease. For some ultra-wealthy Americans, that objective is education. In recent years, two schools backed by local billionaires have opened in West Palm Beach: Jeff Greene’s The Greene School and Bill Koch’s Oxbridge Academy. Their work, trying to solve the problems facing education today, is not far off from what other billionaires are doing elsewhere in the country. Among them is Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has a
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BY ERIC BARTON AND MARY MURRAY
stated educational objective to “significantly increase the number of Black and Latino students and students experiencing poverty who graduate from high school, enroll in a postsecondary institution, and are on track in their first year to obtain a credential with labor-market value,” per the foundation’s website. It pursues this by investing in K-12 education grantees across the country—with a focus on schools and addressing seven specific priorities, including networks for school improvement, educator preparation, and social and emotional learning. Similarly, the foundation started by Eli and Edythe Broad provides grants to support public education systems and improve parent engagement, among other goals. Education—and his access to it—transformed Fred C. Koch’s life. Born in smalltown Texas in 1900, Fred lacked the financial resources to attend the types of schools that
would foster his intellectual curiosity. He had his sights set on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a local businessman helped send him there. Fred would go on to become a high-tech builder of sophisticated oil refineries, an endeavor that would evolve into Koch Industries, which Forbes currently lists as the No. 2 largest private company in America. “He was so grateful,” William “Bill” I. Koch says of his father. “He then told all of his kids that the best thing you could do is get a good education and then you could create your own pathway yourself. He insisted that all of his boys do that. Three of us went to MIT, and one went to Harvard—the poor guy.” But long before Bill Koch would attend his father’s alma mater, he was looking to his example of how hard work, perseverance, and real-world experiences could shape one’s future. “He was a kid—very poor—and then he
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