Lang Donates $30 Million to Swarthmore

Eugene M. Lang, the New York entrepreneur who started a national movement to encourage poor schoolchildren by promising to pay their college tuition, has pledged $30 million to Swarthmore College.

With the donation announced Thursday, Lang’s contributions have reached $50 million for the small Pennsylvania liberal arts college from which he graduated in 1938. “There is no college which more effectively challenges students intellectually while nurturing active social conscience,” Lang said.

Swarthmore, which has 1,400 undergraduates and a $700-million endowment, has not determined what it will do with the contribution. Past donations from Lang have financed a music building, a performing arts center and a variety of scholarships.

In 1981, Lang adopted a sixth-grade class from his old East Harlem neighborhood and paid the bill for all who went to college.

The idea has evolved into the I Have a Dream Foundation, which operates in cities across the country, enabling disadvantaged students to attend college tuition-free.