[ad_1]
Nick Anderson
Reporter covering higher education, national education policy and the global education market
Former New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced Sunday that he was allocating a record $ 1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins University to support the aid. financial student to his alma mater and make his admission process blind.
This gift, considered the most important private donation of modern times for higher education, marks a turning point in a growing national movement to make elite universities more accessible to students from families with higher incomes. low or medium.
It will allow the Baltimore Private Research University to eliminate financial aid loans for incoming students starting next fall, increase subsidies for those in need, and even reduce many undergraduates who had already borrowed money to pay their bills.
In past years, Hopkins President Ronald J. Daniels said that the university was struggling to reach its goal of welcoming all talented students, regardless of their means or background.
"Our dedicated financial support was just too small," said Daniels. "Now, thanks to the extraordinary gift of Mike Bloomberg, we will be blinded by the need constantly and be able to significantly enrich the level of direct assistance we provide to our undergraduate students and their families."
Bloomberg, a Hopkins graduate in 1964, writes in an editorial for the New York Times that his gift is intended to support the idea that opportunities must be based on merit and not on wealth. "This will blind admission to Hopkins forever; finances will never be taken into account in decisions, "he wrote.
[Selective colleges pledge to recruit more low-income students]
With this gift, this 76-year-old businessman and politician highlighted his philanthropic commitment at a time when he was considering running for the presidency in 2020 as a democrat. Bloomberg donated $ 6.4 billion to education and other causes before Sunday's announcement.
Now his only total contribution to Hopkins will exceed $ 3.3 billion.
The donation will be passed on in higher education as some selected colleges and universities seek financial resources that would allow them to recruit more students from low and middle income families. Direct support from colleges is crucial, as the maximum grant from the federal government to Pell Grant is $ 6,095 per year for students in need, less than one-tenth of what many private schools choose for tuition fees. tuition, accommodation costs, meals and meals. Some, including Hopkins, charge $ 70,000 a year.
Bloomberg's gift will help Hopkins make a difference and challenge others to do the same for colleges elsewhere.
"What he calls here is a call for action at all levels, from institutions, donors and especially policy makers to make sure that the teaching American higher education is a driver of social mobility, "said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education. which represents colleges and universities.
"It's a very, very big gift in capital letters," Mitchell said. "A great gift in many ways." Often, major gifts consist of staffing teaching positions or building laboratories and classrooms. This one is giving help.
[[[[Dozens of more selective colleges join the promise of adding low-income students]
"It's not about buildings, or university bureaucracy, or anything else," said Jon Schnur, Bloomberg's adviser on education. "It's about directly supporting these students."
It is difficult to compare donations between times. The inflation calculators show that the $ 7 million legacy of Johns Hopkins, who created the homonymous university in 1873, would be worth well over $ 100 million today.
The Chronicle of Higher Education tracks major donations to higher education since 1967. Two billion dollar donations top the list: A 1999 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Commitment to a Gates Millennium Program Scholars, and a 2006 commitment from the Anil Agarwal Foundation to: establish the Vedanta University in India.
Now, Bloomberg has overshadowed this brand. This is the last in a series that started with a donation of $ 5 to Hopkins the year after graduation.
In recent years, Bloomberg has championed an initiative to secure promises from selective colleges to add tens of thousands of low to moderate income students to their lists. Increased funding from the federal and state governments, he said, will be crucial to achieving this goal. It has also funded efforts to provide these students with a more effective academic council.
For Hopkins, this last gift marks a milestone in a multi-year effort to diversify his student body. According to federal data, the university has about 25,000 students, including about 6,000 undergraduates. It enrolls about 1,300 freshmen a year on its main campus in Baltimore.
[Bloomberg pledges $350 million to Johns Hopkins University]
This year, approximately 15% of first year students are eligible for Pell Scholarships. Thanks to a Bloomberg gift – to be distributed "almost immediately", according to a Bloomberg assistant, Hopkins plans to take steps to increase this share to at least 20%. For the first time, it will widely advertise that its highly competitive admissions process is "blind as needed" – which means that the financial situation is not taken into account at all when the school chooses a class. And he will announce that he meets the needs of students that he admits, without asking them to take out loans.
This formulation – blind to needs, meeting needs, removing loans from aid programs – is the gold standard for accessibility for college admissions. According to US News & World Report, only 18 wealthy institutions, including six from the Ivy League, are able to reach it.
Over the past eight years, Hopkins has quietly adopted a policy of blind admission to needs, said Daniels. But he hesitated to publicize this policy, fearing that he would have to give up his promise. "The truth is that our program was really organized with spit and chewing gum," Daniels said. "Now we are obviously in a very different place."
Daniel Porterfield, former president of a college that is president and CEO of the Aspen Institute, said the Bloomberg gift raises the bar level of schools in the Ivy League and other countries because it promises full access in the future.
"Now they will have to ask themselves: can they also make that commitment in perpetuity?" Said Porterfield.
Read more:
Moving to mobile: the most crucial form of financial assistance for the government
Many drop out before starting. This is how educators want to stop this.
[ad_2]
Source link
