Billionaire Gifts Can’t Fix College Debt
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Over the weekend, billionaire Robert F. Smith ended his commencement address to the Morehouse Class of 2019 with an extraordinary pledge: He would pay off the entire class’s student debt. Smith’s pledge will undoubtedly transform the lives of those students, but what about everyone else? What does student debt relief look like on a national scale? And what can we learn from studying the Morehouse Class of 2019?
Guest: Jordan Weissmann, Slate’s senior business and economics correspondent.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Classmates, class of 2019. |
| 0:10.9 | You look beautiful. |
| 0:12.9 | The best video you'll see on the internet this week |
| 0:14.8 | is definitely the last five minutes of this year's commencement address at Morehouse College. |
| 0:20.2 | On behalf of the eight generations of my family who have been in this country, we're going to put |
| 0:29.6 | a little fuel in your bus. |
| 0:31.6 | As you probably heard, billionaire investor Robert Smith ended his half-hour speech by telling the graduating class, |
| 0:38.9 | he was going to pick up the tab on their college tuition. |
| 0:41.8 | And my family is making a grant to eliminate their student loans. |
| 0:50.4 | This announcement was so unexpected. |
| 0:53.2 | It took a couple of seconds for the crowd to respond. |
| 0:56.2 | When they did, they started chanting MVP. |
| 1:02.6 | I mean, I watched it and I thought this is super delightful, especially because he gives this announcement and it really does seem like no one was expecting it. |
| 1:11.6 | Like there's a guy behind him. |
| 1:13.2 | The face. |
| 1:13.8 | The face. |
| 1:14.8 | It's so, I'm surprised I haven't seen more memes of it. |
| 1:18.7 | Jordan Weissman writes for Slate. |
| 1:20.8 | He's covered higher education for years. |
| 1:23.3 | You need to go and look at the speech just because the guy behind Smith, as he realizes |
| 1:28.2 | what's happening, his smile just perks up and there's just this look of, I mean, it's not |
| 1:32.8 | even Christmas Day. |
... |
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