Michael Bloomberg Donates $ 1.8 Billion to John Hopkins University to Strengthen Financial Assistance to Low-Income Students

Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and one of the richest people in the world, donates $ 1.8 billion to his university, Johns Hopkins University, to strengthen financial aid aimed at low and middle income students.

The university said the contribution – the largest ever awarded to an educational institution in the United States – will allow Johns Hopkins to eliminate student loans in financial aid programs starting next fall. The university will instead offer scholarships that should not be reimbursed.

In an editorial published Sunday in the New York Times, Bloomberg says he is lucky to have attended university and could afford it thanks to a student loan from National Defense and its work on campus.

"My Hopkins degree opened doors that would otherwise have been closed and allowed me to live the American dream," he wrote. "I want to be sure that the school that gave me a chance will be able to permanently open that same door of opportunity for others."

The president of the university, Ronald Daniels, said that Bloomberg's contribution would also allow the institution to engage permanently on "blind admissions of needs", or on the principle of Admission of the most successful students, regardless of their ability to pay for their studies.

"Hopkins has received an unprecedented and transformative gift," he said in a statement, noting that the prestigious school was founded in 1876 by a $ 7 million gift from Baltimore merchant Johns Hopkins, which was time.

In comparison, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Gates Millennium Scholars Program in 1999 with a commitment of $ 1 billion over 20 years. The Chronicle of Higher Education ranked it as the largest private donation to an American higher education institution earlier this month.

Bloomberg said he hoped that this money would allow Hopkins to offer more generous scholarships and alleviate the debt burden of graduates.

"Refusing students to enter college because of their ability to pay compromises equal opportunity," he wrote in the Times. "This perpetuates intergenerational poverty, and it touches the heart of the American dream: the idea that every person in every community has the opportunity to rise according to merit."

Aged 76, he is the founder of the global finance and media company Bloomberg L.P A graduate of Hopkins in 1964, he served as mayor of New York from 2002 to 2013 and has long held the presidency. Earlier this year, he said that he was ruminating a presidential race in 2020.