BALTIMORE_Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will give $1.8 billion in scholarship money to Johns Hopkins University, the largest gift to any academic institution in U.S. history.
The gift, announced Sunday, will be spent exclusively for low- and middle-income scholarships, allowing the university to permanently offer need-blind admissions and eliminating the need for student loans in financial aid packages.
"America is at its best when we reward people based on the quality of their work, not the size of their pocketbook," Bloomberg wrote in a New York Times op-ed. "Denying students entry to a college based on their ability to pay undermines equal opportunity. It perpetuates intergenerational poverty. And it strikes at the heart of the American dream: the idea that every person, from every community, has the chance to rise based on merit."
The gift, he wrote, "will allow the school to offer more generous scholarships. It will ease the burden of student debt for many graduates. And it will help open up the American dream to more young people."
Bloomberg, who is a Hopkins alum and considering a run for president in 2020, had already donated $6.4 billion to philanthropic causes. The gift more than doubles the $1.5 billion he has already given to Hopkins, whose School of Public Health bears his name.
In addition to allowing the university to admit the highest-achieving students, regardless of their ability to pay, the gift will replace student loans in financial aid packages with scholarships that are not required to be repaid, beginning in fall 2019, the university said.
Forty-four percent of Hopkins students graduate with student loan debt, averaging more than $24,000.
