Marshall president and wife make $50M gift to university to promote eliminating student debt

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HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (AP) — Marshall University President Brad Smith and his wife, Alys Smith, have made a $50 million gift to the university to promote a program aimed at eliminating student debt, the school said Tuesday.

The gift is the largest ever given to the public research university and the largest given by any sitting university president to their own institution, the school said.

The money will go toward Marshall For All, a program that allows students to combine scholarships, grants, family contributions and work opportunities to obtain a bachelor’s degree without having to apply for student loans.

Nico Karagosian, president and CEO of the Marshall University Foundation, called the gift “transformative.”

Marshall, which has nearly 10,000 undergraduate and 3,000 graduate students, plans to expand the program with the goal of enabling all students to graduate debt-free by the university’s 2037 bicentennial.

“We are honored to support Marshall University and the Marshall For All program with this gift,” Brad and Alys Smith said in a statement released by the university. “Our ‘why’ is simple: to level the playing field in West Virginia and Appalachia."

The program currently has two tracks One covers full tuition and fees for West Virginia students with a family income below $65,000. The other offers a debt-free bachelor’s degree along with “real-world experience” for randomly selected students either from the state or eligible out-of-state counties within a certain distance of the Huntington campus.

Brad Smith, a former CEO of software company Intuit, became Marshall’s president in January 2022. During his investiture later that year — a date chosen to honor the his late father's birthday — he announced the Marshall For All program.

“My father and mother have always been and remain my moral compass," Smith said. “They committed to providing an opportunity for their children to attend college and sacrificed to ensure my brothers and I could do so. It was a promise made and kept. Alys and I are blessed to transform that promise into the privilege to pay it forward."