GAME CHANGER: ROBERT SMITH’S GIFT TO MOREHOUSE COLLEGE BY KEITH HARRISTON
Morehouse College officials thought for months about how to best make billionaire Robert F. Smith’s donation to pay off student loans accrued by members of the school’s Class of 2019 have impact beyond the graduating class that Smith “adopted.” The answer, according to Morehouse President David A. Thomas, is the Morehouse Student Success Program. Established by the Morehouse Board of Trustees, the Student Success Program will be the funnel through which Smith’s $34 million donation is distributed to pay off the full loan balances— principal and interest—as of Aug. 28, 2019 of students and their parents or guardians. The loan amounts must be verified by the U.S. Department of Education. Federal loans, both subsidized and unsubsidized, Georgia Student Access Loans, Perkins Loans, Parent Plus Loans and some private student loans processed by Morehouse will be eligible to be paid. In all, the pay offs will impact loans taken out by more than 400 students and their parents or guardians from the Class of 2019. Morehouse alumni who graduated in May 2019 or who finished their degree requirements during summer school 2019—and their parents or guardians—are eligible to participate in the inaugural offering from the Morehouse College Student Success
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Program. In addition, they must show supporting documents to prove that loans were taken out to finance a Morehouse College education. Their loans also had to be processed by Morehouse. “It was really all driven by Robert,” Thomas said. [He] took his time to dig in and understand not just student debt but also family debt.” A majority of the $34 million gift from Smith will go toward loans taken out by parents or guardians of members of the Class of 2019, a Morehouse spokesperson said. “We arrived at the $34 million figure by working with the U.S. Department of Education and reconciling their numbers with the loans that we have booked through our financial aid office,” Thomas said. In addition, $400,000 of the $34 million will fund Morehouse research that studies the impact on the lives and careers of the members of the Class of 2019 whose student loans are paid in full or reduced to manageable levels, according to the school. The first subjects of the research study will be some of the inaugural gift recipients who will be encouraged to participate in the study, Thomas said. The study’s results could be used to
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