Ken Griffin kicks off ‘last mile’ college math aid collab with $5 million gift

Miami billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist Ken Griffin announced a $5 million gift Thursday to launch the National Math Talent Fund, an effort to help financially stressed math students across the country get their degrees.

Read more Who goes first at a four-way stop? What Florida law says about that

The fund establishes a partnership between the Mathematical Association of America and the Last Mile Education Fund, a group dedicated to helping college students in other STEM fields finish their degrees by giving money to them in moments of acute need.

The $5 million contribution comes from three organizations owned by Griffin: the hedge fund he founded, Citadel, market-making firm Citadel Securities and his philanthropic platform, Griffin Catalyst.

It is one of several gifts the entrepreneur has made in recent years since moving to South Florida and moving the headquarters of Citadel — one of the world’s largest hedge funds — from Chicago to Miami.

Though the gift is not exclusively benefitting South Florida students, Miami Dade College is the top community college served by the Last Mile Education Fund, with 419 students having received awards from the fund. Florida is the fourth-most served state by the fund.

Ruthe Farmer, founder and CEO of the Last Mile Education Fund, told the Herald the fund works to get students struggling with issues outside of academia over the hump.

“By the time they’ve gotten to their junior year of college in the U.S. we as a society have invested over $600,000 in incubating that talent. So, for us to let that investment fail and be stranded because they couldn’t afford a new laptop or to fix their car makes no sense because they’re not academically deficient. They’re actually academically fine. They’re just financially unstable, and we’ve found that when we stabilize them financially, things happen — they get to spend more time looking for jobs, they get better jobs, they get better grades,” Farmer said

The gift pairs the fund with the Mathematical Association of America, the leading undergraduate math society in the country. The association, with membership in faculties at most universities, will work to identify students who could benefit from monetary help to finish their degrees, Farmer said.

Read more Man hops fence at FLL, takes snooze on JetBlue plane, deputies say

Farmer said about 2,000 students studying math and quantitative science each year don’t finish their degrees because they can’t pay for daily expenses like rent or gas, or they’ve endured an unexpected financial hit — a “giant leak in the talent pipeline,” she said.

In the fund’s years of operation helping out students in other STEM fields, Farmer said recipients have been surprised by its unique approach to helping them.

“They often didn’t believe we were real. They were like, ‘No way is somebody going to just give me money and trust me.’ This is a completely different model. This is not a scholarship, there is not a merit requirement, we are not gatekeeping based on your GPA or anything else. Our premise is ‘If you’ve made it halfway through this really in-demand, hard degree, we need you to finish,’” Farmer said.

The $5 million is far from Griffin’s only, or largest, gift in the education space.

Griffin recently donated $50 million to nonprofit charter school operator Success Academy to expand its footprint in the area. Success Academy has plans to co-locate in a handful of traditional public high schools next year.

Also in education, Griffin gave $50 million to the University of Miami for a research facility, $20 million to Miami Dade College, $16 million for collaborations with Miami-Dade County Public Schools and more.

Read more How does your South Florida hospital rank among the nation’s best? See list