Billionaire to Pay Off Morehouse Graduates' Loans
LEMON: I love this story so much. Imagine the surprise of Morehouse College class of 2019. Actually, just watch it for yourself. Billionaire Robert F. Smith making this promise to all 396 graduating students at their commencement.</s>ROBERT F. SMITH, FOUNDER, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, PRIVATE EQUITY PARTNERS: We're going to put a little fuel in your bus. Now I've got the alumni over there. And this is the challenge to you, alumni. This is my class, 2019.</s>SMITH: And my family is making a grant to eliminate their student loans.</s>LEMON: Wow! Joining me now is David Thomas, president of Morehouse College. President Thomas, you had no idea. Do you really have no idea this was going to happen?</s>DAVID THOMAS, PRESIDENT, MOREHOUSE COLLEGE: I had no idea that that was what Robert Smith was going to say.</s>LEMON: And so -- and your reaction at the time?</s>THOMAS: Amazement, great gratitude to Mr. Smith, and joy for my students because I realized that in that moment, because most of them haven't started to pay their loans back, they don't realize what a gift of liberation this actually is, because we know that there are people who are in their 40s, maybe even their 50s still paying off college loans.</s>LEMON: Wow!</s>THOMAS: And, you know --</s>LEMON: Do you know how this is going to work? Do you have any idea who it is going to work, the details, anything?</s>THOMAS: No. One thing about doing something that's never been done before is -- we're inventing (ph) every aspect of it including --</s>LEMON: But that's OK.</s>THOMAS: -- what the process would be.</s>LEMON: That's OK, though, right? That's OK.</s>THOMAS: That's fine.</s>LEMON: Yeah. Go on. Sorry to cut you off.</s>THOMAS: That's OK. My ear piece came out. But, yeah, no, that's fine. We're glad and we're hoping that we're setting some precedent and that this will happen in the future at other institutions.</s>LEMON: Yeah. I just want to go back and talk to you about something you said. You said most of these students have not even started paying off, that any of them have started paying off their debts yet, so they have no idea what a burden that has been lifted for these new graduates. What does this mean for them? What kinds of opportunities does this create for them?</s>THOMAS: Well, this creates the opportunity for them to pursue their passion. A great example is we know that significant portion of our students have interests in going into teaching. And they often times struggle with taking more lucrative jobs coming out of Morehouse College because lots of companies want to recruit our students. And when they look at their college debt, many of them make the choice to make sure that they can pay off their college debts and not burden their family members with that. Also, Morehouse is well known for sending students to graduate school. Many of them go on to professional graduate schools, medicine, law, architecture. And usually when you go to a professional graduate school, you wind up having to take out a significant amount of loans so they delay it.</s>LEMON: Wow!</s>THOMAS: And in today's environment, it might mean that there will be some who wouldn't go. So, this really opens up lots of avenues for them.</s>LEMON: It's been such a long time since -- listen, when I was in college, it did not cost that much, OK? I mean, the cost of college has just gone up exponentially. And I just want to read this and talk a little bit more about that. This is from Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She says, "It is important to note that people shouldn't be in a situation where they depend on a stranger's enormous act of charity for this kind of liberation to begin with (AKA college should affordable), but it is an incredible act of community investment in this system as it is." Listen, it is a wonderful gift for these students. I mean, this is clearly an extraordinary act of a billionaire. But we have to do something to solve the student debt issue so that they won't have to have an incredible gift.</s>THOMAS: Right.</s>LEMON: Right.</s>THOMAS: So, what do you think we can do?</s>THOMAS: Well, I'll give you, you know, one example that I think is critically important and that would be to increase the amount that is available for Pell grants to support students, you know, going through college to -- also to lift the level of income that a family can have to qualify and to look much more not just at income but also at wealth because we know that at certain communities, your income doesn't really speak to how much wealth they had. And that's particularly true when it comes to communities of color like the African-American community, the average family, even if you hold income constant, meaning how much is in a paycheck. There's actually not as much accumulated wealth because there hasn't been intergenerational transfer.</s>LEMON: Yeah.</s>THOMAS: So my students are much less likely to have a set of grandparents who are helping to defray some of their costs than the students that I taught at Harvard and Georgetown --</s>LEMON: Yeah.</s>THOMAS: -- and Penn during the first 30 years of my career.</s>LEMON: President Thomas, congratulations to you. Whatever you guys create, whatever you figure out how this is going to work, maybe you can, you know, it can be repeated across the country. But I'm so happy for the graduates. And I'm so happy for you and we're grateful for you coming on. Thank you so much.</s>THOMAS: Well, thank you.</s>LEMON: Yeah. Thank you very much.</s>THOMAS: All right.</s>LEMON: President David Thomas. We'll be right back.</s>THOMAS: All right.