Carey approached Johns Hopkins with a proposal to start a business school in the 1950s, but the college was not interested. Carey announced December 5, 2006 his donation of $50 million to Johns Hopkins University. He was a trustee emeritus at Hopkins and donated the money through his W.P. Carey Foundation. The gift is the largest to Hopkins in support of business education and is now called the Carey Business School. The Hopkins business school was renamed after William Carey's great-great-great-grandfather, James Carey. The school offers a Master of Science in Real Estate program, one of the first in the Baltimore/Washington, D.C. corridor.