ATLANTA — A billionaire has promised to set up a grant to pay off the student debt of nearly 400 students from the Morehouse College graduating class of 2019. <br /><br />Robert F. Smith — a billionaire investor estimated to be worth $5 billion by Forbes — was this year's commencement speaker. His gift to the graduating class? A grant to pay off their student loans. That's 396 young graduates. <br /><br />In the live Facebook video shared by Morehouse College, you can hear students erupting into celebration and professors behind Smith go wide-eyed after he announced the surprise in the last few minutes of his speech. <br /><br />Before breaking the news to the class, Smith told the students, "we're gonna put a little fuel in your bus." That little fuel will go a long way for many. <br /><br />According to the Associated Press, finance major, Aaron Mitchom was going to graduate with a $200,000 student loan. Smith's grant will allow him to step out of college debt-free. He told the AP, "I was shocked. My heart dropped. We all cried. In the moment it was like a burden had been taken off."<br /><br />Student loan debt in America is on the rise. According to a report by the Institute for College Access and Success, in 1996 college seniors in four-year programs had an average debt of $12,750. That number has increased to $28,650 as of 2017.<br /><br />Smith's donation is all the more impactful because Morehouse is a predominantly African-American college. <br /><br />According to a report by the Brookings Institution, African-American college graduate students owe $7,400 more than white students. Their debt grows to almost $53,000 four years after graduation. That's double the amount of white students.<br /><br />This isn't Smith's first contribution to Morehouse. In January, he donated $1.5 million to fund scholarships and created an outdoor study area for` the students. Imagine if the rest of the 1 percent did stuff like this regularly?
