Wednesday morning, Georgetown University President John DeGioia announced the creation of the McCourt Public Policy School, a project funded by the largest donation received in the school’s history.
Frank McCourt (COL ‘75), founder, chairman, and CEO of McCourt Global, an investment firm that works in the fields of real estate, private equity, sports, and media, donated $100 million to create the school. The Georgetown Public Policy Institute, now a part of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, will be incorporated into the new school.
“The McCourt School will bring an innovative approach to public policy education and discourse by leveraging the unique resources of Georgetown to contribute policy-based, data-driven research and solutions,” DeGioia said during a media conference call on Wednesday morning.
According to DeGioia, the idea for the new Public Policy School has been under discussion over the past ten years. The concept first emerged during a meeting of the University’s Board of Directors, of which McCourt was a member from 2005 to 2011.
When referring to the particulars of the new school, Provost Robert Groves emphasized that interdisciplinary and data-based approaches will be key aspects.
“In the interdisciplinary, it is clear that the problems facing this country and many other countries in the world don’t come packaged in little boxes that can be solved only by economists and only by political scientists with their knowledge, with their disciplines,” Groves said.
With regards to the data-based approach, Groves introduced the Mass Data Institute, a resource that “will supply scholars with data resources to motivate and guide their analyses and discovering in regards to what policies are effective and how policies become effective in ways that are really unprecedented.”
According to administrators, in addition to the creation of this data institute, a large part of the money will be invested in adding five endowed chair positions for new faculty.
“We already have good faculty who are experts in health and education and other topics, and this represents an opportunity through endowed chairs to go after some of the very best scholars from around the United States, and indeed from around the world, and bring them here and increase the range of topics we have expertise on and expand our depth,” said Edward Montgomery, Dean of the GPPI and future Dean of the McCourt School.
Faculty members welcomed the new opportunities that the McCourt School will provide.
“GPPI has always been a very top tier place to study policy, but most of our competitors are their own separate schools. … Expert faculty and expert practitioners who we want to become a part of the teaching environment here may be more likely to notice the school because it’s a school as opposed to a department,” said Micah Jensen, visiting assistant professor at the GPPI who received his Masters Degree and PhD at Georgetown.
Some of the donation will also be allocated to creating the new McCourt Fellows Program that will recruit and offer scholarships to future policy makers and scholars.
“We will also use some of the gift to go after the very best students, to be able to attract those students that may be going to Harvard or Princeton, and bring them here to Washington, D.C., to the McCourt School, so that we are training the future of policymaking and policy practice for tomorrow,” Montgomery said.
GPPI offers merit-based financial assistance through the Georgetown Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and need-based federal loans and employment aid administered by the Office of Student Financial Services. The $100 million donation is expected to increase the resources available to recruit students interested in public policy, helping students pay the yearly tuition of over $44,000.
With regards to the physical location of the McCourt Public Policy School, DeGioia told the Voice that the school will use GPPI’s current space in Old North at first but will eventually move to a campus downtown.
“It is our intent to identify a location more in the heart of the city, more in the heart of the policy formation part of the city, where we would be able to ultimately locate the school,” DeGioia said. “That will be a part of our campus planning efforts and it will be one of the issues we take into account as we move forward.”
Despite the University’s positive reception of this donation, several national media outlets have expressed skepticism about McCourt’s financial precedents, putting into question the integrity of his work.
In 2004, Forbes reported McCourt borrowed $421 million, including a $196 million loan from Fox, to purchase the Los Angeles Dodgers. Even though the value of the Dodgers nearly doubled under McCourt’s ownership, the team’s debt increased an estimated $600 million, primarily because he used his ownership stake in the team to finance multimillion dollar personal spending sprees. After driving the Dodgers into bankruptcy, McCourt sold the franchise for $2 billion in March 2012, walking away with a profit of $800 million.
The administration did not comment on McCourt’s relationship with the Dodgers but confirmed that they will continue working with McCourt through the final planning and implementation stages.
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article stated that the administration refused to comment on McCourt’s relationship with the Dodgers. A more accurate portrayal of the conversation is that they did not comment.
