During its tenure, the General Education Board was a major force in improving public and higher education, especially in the South. Beginning in 1905 the board financed a professor of secondary education (Philander P. Claxton) at UT, charged to promote public schools in the state. John D. Rockefeller Sr. established the General Education Board in 1903 to aid education in the United States “without distinction of race, sex or creed.” The board provided grants for endowment and general budgetary support of colleges and universities, support for special programs, fellowship and scholarship assistance to state school systems at all levels, and development of social and economic resources as a device to improve educational systems.
Major colleges and universities across the country, and many small institutions, received some assistance from the board. The board was especially active in promoting the public school movement in the early part of the twentieth century. In 1914 the board assumed the programs of the Southern Education Board, including support for state agents for white and black rural schools in the Tennessee Department of Public Instruction. The GEB also supported agricultural demonstration work, supporting agents for Boys’ Corn Clubs and Girls’ Tomato Clubs in 1913 until their transfer to state and federal programs under the 1914 Smith-Lever Act and the 1928 Capper-Ketcham Act, which supplemented it. Higher education increasingly concerned the board after 1920, resulting in fellowship programs and gifts to college and university endowments. After 1940 programs other than those for southern education ceased. The funds of the board were nearly exhausted by the 1950s, and the last appropriation was made in 1964, after which the board was dissolved.