$100-Million Tuition Grant Brings High Hopes to Pittsburgh

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has announced it will contribute as much as $100-million over the next 10 years to the Pittsburgh Promise scholarship program for the city’s public-school students, reports The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The medical center will give an initial $10-million for trade-school scholarships for 2008 graduates and will contribute the remainder through a 10-year challenge grant to be administered by the Pittsburgh Foundation.

The medical center said the money is aimed at revitalizing Pittsburgh and its school district, as well as keeping promising high-school graduates in the area. It has been one of many area nonprofit organizations under fire of late for accumulating large profits without, critics say, giving enough taxes back to the city.

City school superintendent Mark Roosevelt hopes that the grant will prompt other donations, with the goal of raising up to $225-million in all. Interest from the endowment would be used to pay for scholarships in perpetuity. “The only way to get Pittsburgh back to its glory days is by dreaming big and working hard,” Mr. Roosevelt explained.

The gift is the latest example of the efforts from “anchor institutions” — universities, hospitals, and other nonprofit groups — to benefit disadvantaged neighborhoods, three commentators write in a recent opinion piece in The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

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