Brokerage Invests in Students, Guarantees College Scholarships
Twenty-five students gathered in the auditorium at 74th Street School in South-Central Los Angeles learned Monday that they now can dream of going to college without worrying about how to pay for it.
The 25 youngsters, hand-picked for their academic promise, are among 250 first-graders in 10 inner-city schools nationwide who were given a guarantee of full college tuition from the Merrill Lynch Foundation, a philanthropic arm of the investment company.
Merrill Lynch will pay their way through college, or offer a stipend to those who choose work or the military, through an investment account it established to benefit youngsters in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Miami, New York, Philadelphia and Washington.
The scholarships will cover the total cost of “four years of education at any school--no limit,” Merrill Lynch’s Southern California regional director, Arlen Crouch, told an audience of beaming parents and school, business and civic leaders during a brief ceremony to announce the program, which is called Scholarship Builder.
The national Urban League proposed the program and will monitor the students’ progress over the next 16 years. Los Angeles Urban League President John Mack said the Los Angeles branch plans to take the children on field trips and offer special tutoring if needed.
College and the dilemma of how to pay for it may not have been well understood by some of the first-graders at 74th Street School. For example, all Dawn Ellison, 6, knew was that college was “the last school you go to . . . where you study and where you learn to be something,” she said.
But to the parents, who used words such as “elated,” “ecstatic” and “shocked” to describe their reactions, the meaning was clear.
“It’s like winning the lottery!” said Dawn’s mother, Karen Ellison. “I’ve got three children, and this is going to help out a lot.”
In recent years, a few wealthy individuals, such as New York philanthropist Eugene Lang and San Marino resident Win Rhodes-Bea, have offered scholarships as an incentive to underprivileged students who lack the means or the encouragement to seek a college education.
Lang’s I Have A Dream foundation supports several thousand youngsters in cities around the nation.
The Merrill Lynch program is the first to be sponsored by a major corporation, Mack said.
District officials said 74th Street School was chosen because of its strong preschool program and parent network. Half of the students were selected because they were graduates of the preschool program, while the remainder were chosen by teachers for having good attendance records and work habits and “a curiosity for learning,” Principal Ann Hayes said.
Students who wind up getting a job or entering the military after high school will receive a one-time stipend of at least $1,000 to cover travel and clothing expenses.
“We recognize that realistically, perhaps every child may not go on to college,” Mack said. “The idea at least is to encourage them to stay in school and get an education, instead of running the streets. I’m hopeful this will result in a positive alternative to the dropouts and drug pushers and create some real heroes and heroines of a different type for South-Central Los Angeles.”
Merrill Lynch will invest $2,000 per student per year for the next 16 years through the fund. Company officials project that the funds will be worth as much as $16 million by the time the first-graders graduate from high school.
