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Morehouse College Graduates’ Student Loans to Be Paid Off by Billionaire
Mr. Smith also gifted the school with scholarship grants earlier this year.
Billionaire investor Robert F. Smith.
A life-changing event. Now these grads can marry, buy a house, continue with school, do anything without crippling student loan payments due every month.
Related: Who Is Robert F. Smith, the Man Paying Off Morehouse Graduates’ Loans?
Mr. Smith also gifted the school with scholarship grants earlier this year.
Billionaire investor Robert F. Smith.
5/19/19
The 396 young men began the day as students in caps and gowns, ready to graduate from Morehouse College — full of hope, but burdened in most cases with the debts that financed their education. Then their commencement speaker went off-script with an extraordinary pledge: the newly minted alumni of the historically black college in Atlanta would go forth into the world student debt-free. Robert F. Smith, the billionaire investor who founded Vista Equity Partners and became the richest black man in America, told the crowd that he and his family would pay off the entire graduating class’s student debt, freeing them to begin their next chapter, whether it was a master’s program, a position with Teach for America or an internship at Goldman Sachs, without loan payments to worry about.
The announcement came at a time of growing calls across the country to do something about the mounting burden of student loan debt, which has more than doubled in the past decade. “We’re going to put a little fuel in your bus,” Mr. Smith, dressed in academic regalia to receive an honorary doctorate, said near the end of his address on Sunday at the school’s 135th commencement service. He turned to Morehouse alumni in attendance and abruptly issued a challenge. “This is my class, 2019,” he said, personally claiming the graduating seniors as his own. “And my family is making a grant to eliminate their student loans.” It seemed to take a moment for the immensity of what he had promised to sink in. Then the place erupted, as the senior class, all male and mostly African-American, shook hands and hugged one another in glee.
A life-changing event. Now these grads can marry, buy a house, continue with school, do anything without crippling student loan payments due every month.
Related: Who Is Robert F. Smith, the Man Paying Off Morehouse Graduates’ Loans?