According to its tax records, MHS spent $91,095 per child on academics, sports, trips, mental, and physical health care, scholarships and living expenses in the 2018-19 academic year - intended as a glide path to the middle class. In recent years, half have come from families with histories of substance abuse, around 40% had a family history of mental health problems, and about a third had a family member who was incarcerated. The boarding school educates and houses about 2,100 low-income and at-risk children, pre-K through high school. With more than $17 billion in assets, the Milton Hershey School is richer than Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh combined.

The tens of thousands of dollars in college funds, though an unusually generous scholarship, would turn out to bring new problems.įor Dayshawn Carroll, who graduated from the Milton Hershey School 10 years ago, the college scholarship money would turn out to be more burden than benefit. But she told her 11-year-old son that the school, which only admits children from low-income families, was not only free but would pay for his college education too. The school, located in Derry Township, requires students to live on campus, and Carroll wondered at first if his mom was punishing him by sending him away. The school’s manicured campus, about 15 miles from the impoverished Harrisburg neighborhood where he had grown up, was a world apart - “like Hogwarts,” he said, referring to the boarding school in the Harry Potter novels. He had lived for six years at the nation’s wealthiest private school, his days tightly scheduled around studying, sports, and chores. When Dayshawn Carroll graduated from the Milton Hershey School in 2011, his goal of college seemed firmly within his grasp. Sign up for Spotlight PA’s free newsletters This Spotlight PA article was produced in partnership with ProPublica and The Philadelphia Inquirer, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network.

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