Wait, Is Bloomberg’s $1.8-Billion Donation to Johns Hopkins a Good Thing?

Michael Bloomberg’s $1.8-billion gift to the Johns Hopkins University will cover the costs of thousands of scholarships at the private institution. Many have heralded the donation as a pathbreaking piece of philanthropy on an unflashy aspect of higher education. In his New York Times op-ed announcing the donation, Bloomberg said his goal was to “eliminate money problems from the admissions equation for qualified students.”

But after the confetti cleared, some financial-aid experts posed a lingering question: Was this huge influx of financial aid really going to benefit anyone beyond the private university in Baltimore?

Hardly, if at all, according to some experts, who added that Bloomberg’s gift may in fact deepen the divide between the nation’s elite institutions and the rest of higher education. Surely the gift will benefit the low- and middle-income students who carve their way into the selective institution, but a majority of students won’t get into Johns Hopkins or similar universities.

Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor who studies higher education at Temple University, said a family member sent her a text with news of the gift on Sunday. She said she had read only the headline of Bloomberg’s op-ed, “Why I’m Giving $1.8 Billion for College Financial Aid,” and her hopes rose that he might be creating a program that focused on living expenses for college students, or donating to an underresourced community-college system — historically, such institutions accept students from diverse racial or low socioeconomic backgrounds. But when she realized the money was for the elite and selective Johns Hopkins, she said she felt “sick to my stomach.” She added that she was “deeply disappointed yet totally unsurprised.”

“This is somebody everyone says finally gets the inequality in higher ed,” Goldrick-Rab said of Bloomberg, who went to Johns Hopkins on a student loan, and by working while studying. “But I think in many ways he just doubled down on it.”

Johns Hopkins, she said, is a selective institution based on merit, which makes it more difficult for disadvantaged students to attend. And it feels as if he only strengthened his commitment to traditional models of the university that she said have long underserved needy students. She argued that an institution can’t do the work of raising their fortunes if it’s gated off to students who lack the advantages, like a good high school and SAT tutors, of the privileged.

If accessibility was really Bloomberg’s goal, Goldrick-Rab said, there are many other ways of reaching that end. Why not donate to the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, she wondered, or a public system like the City University of New York?

Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University, said that what the Bloomberg gift really would do is increase access for some to Johns Hopkins. It also would raise the university’s profile among selective colleges trying to recruit the highest performing students from poorer backgrounds.

“We’re talking about Hopkins right now,” Kelchen said. “They’re getting all kinds of national attention.”

Kelchen also said the donation would widen the separation between elite institutions and everyone else. Only 54 colleges in America and Canada have endowments larger than $1.8 billion, he said. That gift is roughly the size of the entire endowment of the University of California at Berkeley.

The Positive Spin

But Ty Trippet, a spokesman for Bloomberg, wrote in an email to The Chronicle that the billionaire had “founded and funded programs to improve college access and affordability across a very broad swath of higher education institutions and initiatives.” Among them, Bloomberg’s American Talent Initiative, a movement that places students from low- and middle-income families into colleges with strong six-year graduation rates.

Why Johns Hopkins? Trippet said Bloomberg wanted to focus on the college that “gave him a shot at the American dream.” He would not comment on whether Bloomberg had plans to donate to other institutions in the near future.

According to the university, talk about the donation had been underway for the past year, and the institution received official word that it would be getting the money only last week.

Ronald J. Daniels, the university’s president, wrote in an email on Sunday that starting in the fall of 2019, loans would no longer be necessary to fund any Johns Hopkins students’ education.

“This historic gift reflects Mike Bloomberg’s deep belief in the transformative power of higher education and his insistence that it be accessible to all qualified students, regardless of financial means,” Daniels wrote.

The university will replace loans in the aid packages of current students with scholarships, starting in the spring semester of 2019. The money will allow the institution, Daniels wrote, to reduce the amount families will have to contribute to their children’s education. The university also plans to use the money to diversify its undergraduate enrollment, making one in five students eligible for Pell Grants. Today, only about 15 percent of those students are Pell eligible.

Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, said the gift would redefine the conversation around giving in higher education. He said the donation would transform the university not just for the current generation but also for future students. “It’s going to be a forever effect.”

Mitchell said the gift was also a clarion call for higher-education leaders, donors, and policy makers to “really focus on the need to rev up the engine of social mobility that has been historically our higher-ed system.”

“Influential alums of means can change the trajectory of an institution,” Mitchell said. “That’s absolutely right. So can state and federal policy. So can gifts from lots of smaller-pocketed donors.”

Chris Quintana is a staff reporter. Follow him on Twitter @cquintanadc or email him at chris.quintana@chronicle.com.