Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Sunday that he is donating a record gift to an academic institution — $1.8 billion to his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University.
Bloomberg said the boatload of money will ease the financial burden of low- and middle-income students at the prestigious Baltimore school by eliminating their need for loans.
“America is at its best when we reward people based on the quality of their work, not the size of their pocketbook,” the three-term mayor and potential 2020 presidential candidate said in a statement. “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,” Bloomberg said.
The massive gift comes on top of the $1.5 billion Bloomberg has given to Hopkins for a variety of other programs over the years, helping to fund research, teaching programs and financial-aid efforts at the school, where undergrad tuition alone runs around $54,000.
Its School of Public Health is already named after the 76-year-old political philanthropist, who graduated from Hopkins in 1964 with a degree in electrical engineering.
According to Forbes, Bloomberg’s current net worth is $46.3 billion.
He recently donated $100 million to 2018 Democratic efforts to take back Congress — which saw the party reclaim the U.S. House of Representatives — and has donated millions of dollars more to combat the National Rifle Association, pushing for tougher gun laws across the country.
Before turning to politics, Bloomberg made his fortune at his eponymously named media and technology conglomerate, which provides high-speed computer terminals and news reports for Wall Street firms.
Bloomberg announced the $1.8 billion Hopkins gift in an opinion column published in the New York Times.
This report originally appeared on NYPost.com.
