(Source: Bloomberg) A small-town boy from Missouri who rose to prominence in finance, Byron Trott, has pledged to donate $150 million over the course of ten years to support the recruitment of rural students by more private and public universities.
The latest gift expands upon a $20 million program his family foundation launched with universities like Yale, Ohio State, and his alma mater, the University of Chicago, last year. The number of colleges participating in the “Stars” initiative has been doubled to 32, which includes Stanford, Amherst College, and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Trott Family Philanthropies will increase financing in order to assist in getting high school students ready for college.
“Stars and its associated initiatives are providing high-achieving rural students with access to higher education that they might not have otherwise encountered,” said a statement from Trott, the billionaire chairman and co-chief executive officer of merchant bank BDT & MSD Partners. “And it will benefit students, campuses, and our economy as a whole.”
Trott is attempting to close the gap in college attendance between rural and non-rural kids in the nation. As prestigious private schools want to increase their geographic and socioeconomic diversity—especially in light of the Supreme Court’s decision last year that racial preferences cannot be utilized in admissions—his appeal is finding an increasingly sympathetic audience.
With the help of a group called the Rooted Alliance, the most recent donation from Trott Family Philanthropies will also increase the assistance provided to high school students in learning about possible job choices, financial aid, and college alternatives.
Trott, 65, founded Chicago-based BDT in 2009 and later merged it with Michael Dell’s MSD Partners early in the previous year. Trott is the son of a garment store owner and telephone line repairman. Prior to this, Trott worked for nearly thirty years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., handling accounts for the Koch, Pritzker, and Walton families as well as Warren Buffett.
At the University of Chicago, where he collaborated with Vice President for Enrollment Jim Nondorf and provided financing to draw more children from small areas, he launched his campaign to increase the number of rural students. According to Nondorf, 10% of the 1,700 freshmen in this year’s class are from rural areas.
Trott provides direct financing to the colleges through Stars, formerly known as the Small Town and Rural Students College Network. This enables admissions offices to hire staff members who are specifically focused on recruiting from rural areas. In the first year of the initiative, college officials visited 1,100 high schools across 49 states while traveling the nation both individually and in groups.
Executive director of Stars and deputy director of admissions for Chicago, Marjie Betley, remarked, “That’s exponential beyond what any of us could have done on our own.”