NBA Star Kevin Durant Invests $10 Million to Help Maryland Youth Get into and Graduate College

Durant is dropping a life-ladder called the Durant Center smack in the middle of the Seat Pleasant, Md., area where he grew up. It isn’t an elevator. The 60 students in the initial group must climb the ladder themselves.
But it’s a path.
“I want them to see the world,” Durant said in a phone interview this month. “I want them to see where people are from and see that there are things outside their world. I don’t know exactly or at what pace that they will get it, but there is a world outside that they need to see.”

Durant’s $10 million will seed construction and operating expenses of a local chapter of College Track, which is scheduled to open this year.
“This hits home, because it’s right in the neighborhood where me and my buddies lived,” said the 6-foot-11 “small” forward.
College Track is a 10-year program that provides the basic infrastructure — tutoring, test preparation, picking a college that is a “fit” and how to get financial aid — that kids from less-advantaged families often don’t have.
“These are all the things that middle-class families deliver if your parents went to college,” said Elissa Salas, College Track’s chief executive. “If your parents didn’t go to college, we fill that gap.”

Durant’s seed money brings College Track to the East Coast for the first time. Nine College Tracks across California, Colorado and Louisiana have helped 3,000 students get to college and beyond. The Durant Center will be the first of three facilities planned for the Washington area. Salas plans two more in the District by 2021.
“We didn’t have the resources to get our minds thinking about the next level,” Durant said. “I want to do my part, whatever it is. If College Track students want to be the next Steve Jobs [co-founder of Apple and Laurene Powell Jobs’s late husband] or the next influencer or the next tastemakers, they can get there.”
Durant had his own ladder out: basketball. He was one of the most sought-after high school players in the country, and he attended Texas before turning professional after a year. He is one of the highest-paid athletes in the world. He also knows that without that gift — and his Eiffel Tower frame — he might have ended up somewhere other than a Bay Area home high in the clouds.
“The majority of my friends, we didn’t have households,” Durant said. “When your mom’s at work and you don’t have a dad, you’re leaving school, and you need to know what you want at that age. You need somebody to guide you in the right direction. Your mind wanders and you want things, but we don’t know how to achieve them.”
A College Track program isn’t cheap to run. It is high-touch service that involves salaries and a professional staff and scholarships. At the high school level, students come three to five hours a week after school on school days. They also commit to a summer experience, whether it’s with College Track or some other service. It adds up to about one year extra of high school.
“Students understand that it’s a commitment,” Salas said.
The ultimate goal? Earning a bachelor’s degree. Four hundred College Track students have graduated from college so far, and that number is on pace to reach 496 this year.
“Getting into college is half the battle,” Salas said. “It’s also getting out. Only 21 percent of first-generation, low-income students graduate from college. We are trying to combat that.”
Durant’s affiliation with College Track started at a January 2017 Silicon Valley technology conference focused on investment in the Bay Area. Durant was talking with Powell Jobs, musician Will.I.Am and venture capitalist Ron Conway about the athlete’s philanthropic focus.
“He had a vision of his own experience, which was mentors and tutors and coaches who had an influence, and who changed his life trajectory, which is what we do,” Salas said. “The leadership component: Exploring your dreams, your purpose and passion. An expectation of service work. That is what resonated with Kevin. It didn’t take much selling.”
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