Record $10M Chicago Law Grad Gift Will Fund 60 Full-Tuition Merit Scholarships
Sixty students at the University of Chicago Law School will have their tuition paid in full thanks to a record $10 million gift from a 1973 graduate who himself got a full scholarship for his legal education there.
The donation by David Rubenstein, 61, who is now a university trustee, will fund 20 merit scholarships for three years running, the law school announces in a press release today. The scholarship program is to begin in 2011.
This will be the largest merit scholarship program the law school has ever had. However, Gerald Ratner, a 1937 graduate of the law school, provided $15 million to help fund a campus athletic center that opened in 2003, and $6 million in 2006 to benefit the university’s law school and art museum, the University of Chicago Chronicle reported at the time.
Rubenstein worked in the Carter administration before moving on to cofound and serve as managing director for the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm.
He credits his own scholarship for allowing him to attend law school without help from his parents and making it possible for him to pursue a public service career after he graduated, the release recounts.
“I probably couldn’t have pursued that opportunity if I had been burdened with debt,” Rubenstein said, explaining that he hopes the scholarships he is funding will allow others to follow their dreams, too.
He says it is possible he will continue to fund other scholarships at the law school in the future.
“With $46,000 a year for tuition, plus room and board, it’s easy to lose students to other schools that can provide these scholarships,” Dean Michael Schill tells the Wall Street Journal, in an apparent reference to highly endowed competitors such as Harvard Law School and Yale Law School. “Now, 10 percent of our enrolled class for the next three years will be getting tuition paid for, which will hopefully generate a virtuous cycle of even more scholarships,” Schill says.
Additional coverage:
Bloomberg: “Carlyle Founder Gives Chicago Law School $10 Million”
Updated Sept. 9 to include additional details about Ratner’s donations.
