STUDENT loan debt still crippling burden for millions of Americans.
Michael Bloomberg's record $1.8 billion donation for financial aid to John Hopkins University highlights the problem of student debt in America, which can still be a hurdle even years after graduation.
According to the Department of Education , 42.2 million Americans were a federal student loan at the end of June 2018 for a total sum of nearly $1.5 trillion, the largest volume of debt after home loans.
Bloomberg, the former Mayor of New York, said he was making the gift to his alma mater to help qualified low and middle-income students more easily afford access to university in a country where post-secondary education fees at elite schools routinely exceeds $50,000 a year, a prohibitive barrier for most families.
''I was lucky : My father was a bookkeeper who never made than $6,000 a year. But I was able to afford John Hopkins University through a National Defense student loan and by holding down a job on campus,'' Bloomberg, who also founded the financial news service of the same name, wrote in New York Times op-ed.
The donation, believed to be the biggest ever to a university, ''will ensure that we are able to recruit more first-generation and low-income students and provide them with full access to every dimension of the John Hopkins experience.'' its head Ronald Daniels said.
Currently, 14 percent of students at the institution in Baltimore, Maryland, complete their studies in debt, on average owning more than $24,000 , university data shows.
For Sandy Baum, a university professor at the Urban Institute, Bloomberg's gift ''great'' but ''that's just a drop in the ocean.''
His move would have had a bigger impact if he gave money to improve the quality of education for more students,in less elite private or public institutions, she told AFP, adding that they sorely lack funding. [Agencies]
The honor and serving of the latest operational research on universities continues.
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