5/20/19
Though yours truly has been known to dump plenty of figurative
precipitation in the past and looks to be doing the same thing in this
instance, I am not raining on the panglossian parade provided by the beyond generous
$40 million or so offer by private equity billionaire Robert F. Smith to pay off the student loans of all the 2019 graduates of Morehouse College. Mr. Smith is to be commended for this
magnanimous display of generosity and humanity, the latest of his many such genuine,
and heartfelt, philanthropic efforts. He is clearly a great man and should be
recognized as such. Further, beyond its
immediate impact on the financial situations of the Morehouse 2019 graduates
and their families, this gift should do wonders for enrollment not only at
Morehouse but also at similarly situated traditionally black colleges and
universities, institutions both in need of and worthy of such a shot in the arm. God
bless Mr. Smith for his selfless generosity; we could all learn much from
it.
Since you’re waiting for the “but,” here it comes…
Mr. Smith is doubtless several orders of magnitude
smarter than yours truly, so he has probably thought of this, but consider the
following scenario:
You are a 2019 Morehouse graduate or the parent of such a
graduate. You have busted your hindquarters
and made sacrifice after sacrifice so that you, or your child, would not have
to take out much, or any, student debt.
You worked an extra job, gave up those few little luxuries you could
afford, juggled your finances artfully, or made other efforts to pay for your,
or your child’s, education. You not
only wanted you or your kid to graduate from college debt free, but you wanted
to impart, or practice, the lesson that one should work for, rather than borrow
for, commendable goals. You wanted to teach,
or display, the now old-fashioned notion that debt is not the solution to one’s
problems but, more likely, is the agar dish in which even more problems can
grow. So you busted it and now you, or
your kid, is debt free.
In the blink of an eye, Mr. Smith has made a chump out of
you. You were foolish to give up the
car, the vacation, the nice meal out, the time spent at a second difficult
and/or boring job, or, in some cases, maybe even a meal or a needed doctor’s visit
or prescription drug, to get you or your kid through college. Why on earth did you make such sacrifices
when similarly or, in some cases, better financially situated colleagues made
little or no sacrifices and walked away just as debt free as you or your kids
are? Why didn’t you just buy into the ever
more popular notion that borrowing is the key to prosperity, especially when now
several generations have been taught that borrowing has no consequences? And what has Mr. Smith’s, again, very
generous offer taught these students about debt and the responsibilities, and
potential hazards, it entails?
As I said a few paragraphs ago, Mr. Smith is far smarter
than I, so maybe he has thought of this.
Maybe there is a provision in his generous offer to make some sort of
payment to those families who eschewed the easy route of borrowing in favor of
the difficult path of sacrifice in order to benefit their children, or
themselves, in more ways than purely financially. But I haven’t read news of any such
plan.
If no such provision is included in his still embryonic
plan, I urge Mr. Smith to do something for the families of Morehouse students
who chose to pay, rather than borrow, their college expenses. The lessons imparted by not doing so would perhaps
be more dangerous than the debt Mr. Smith is paying.
Again, though,
thanks, Mr. Smith, for your generous spirit.
You must be a terrific a guy.
