New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has just given $350 million to Johns Hopkins University, his alma mater. This gift, combined with his other contributions over the last several decades, brings his total JHU gift to $1.18 billion, almost half the value of school’s total endowment.
According to an article in Forbes:
Bloomberg’s latest gift will be split into two focuses, with $250 million going toward the creation of cross-disciplinary programs and the funding for 50 faculty appointments in areas including water resource sustainability and global health. The balance of the $350 million gift will be given to need-based financial aid programs for undergraduate students. The university expects 2,600 scholarships to be awarded over the next 10 years.
Johns Hopkins, in Baltimore, is one of the few elite private American universities that do not currently have a need-blind admissions policy. This means that in making admissions decisions Johns Hopkins considers not just a high school student’s academic credentials, but also his family’s ability to finance an education.
Ronald Daniels, the president of the university, said in 2010 that he would like to make Hopkins’s admissions need-blind eventually.
Bloomberg’s first gift to the university was $5 in 1965, the year after he graduated. [Image via]
