Billionaires Can’t Save Us From Student Loans
By now, I’m sure you’ve seen at least the headline for the best graduation speech of 2019: Robert F. Smith shocked 396 new alumni last weekend when he informed a class at Morehouse College in 2019 that he was planning to pay off their student loans. … All of them.
Billionaire not immediately explained the institution, he will pay the total amount of which is estimated at $ 40 million . Smith, who is worth an estimated $ 5 billion , is no stranger to investing in his studies. But for a graduate looking to cut student loan payments over the next 10 years or more, it’s not easy.
Last year, Morehouse’s board-and-board tuition totaled $ 48,500 . The average student loan debt for private college graduates is $ 32,300. Anyway, that’s a lot of money – even if you just multiply $ 32,300 by $ 396, you get an approximate amount of $ 12,790,800. Woof.
So here’s the solution, right? Are we just waiting for the super rich to hand over the checks to save the debt? Not so fast. If you add up the net worth of the 10 richest people in the United States, you get $ 729.7 billion. Meanwhile, as a nation, we have about $ 1.56 trillion in student loan debt. Combine Bezos, Gates, Koch and others. Koch et. others, and we haven’t even come close to collective reward. (And this is an example from heaven anyway, because the likelihood that these guys will give up their every penny is so small that it’s ridiculous.)
This is why it is so difficult to accept or reject any one potential solution to the student loan debt crisis, even if I look at each one with longing. Elizabeth Warren’s plan to tax super-rich estimates will generate $ 2.75 trillion in revenue over a ten-year period, but along with debt relief on student loans, this funding will also go towards universal childcare, Green New Deal and Medicare. Warren’s plan will help burdened borrowers, but it won’t be the quick fix that so many of us crave. NYU offers a free medical school , but it is only available to a limited number of new professionals. Employer loan repayment or reconciliation programs save you time in the long run, but you need to get a job first.
So yeah, of course it’s amazing this billionaire is paying off loans to 396 new graduates. But until something changes deeper in the system, we will be surprised when rich people make such impressive proposals. And then the novelty may start to wear off, and the public will pay less attention to these announcements, no matter how grandiose or understated they may be. And then we’ll get back to where we started, and we’ll probably sit back and wonder if we’ll ever get forgiven on a public service loan .