没有学生债务的另一种生活：亿万富翁用3400万美元做了一个实验

两个年轻人在同一所大学，从同一天开始以同样的方式资助他们的教育：高昂的学生债务。然而，这两个同时就读亚特兰大一所历史悠久的黑人男子学校莫尔豪斯大学的学生，却因为毕业时间不同，而在截然不同的环境下开始了他们毕业后的生活。如今，埃利-柯克兰（Elie Kirkland）的经济状况非常稳定，以至于在24岁的时候，他就开始考虑买房了。而同样24岁的理查德-威廉姆斯（Richard Williams）却陷入了困境，以至于他推迟了成为一名医生的梦想。

在2018年获得生物学和公共卫生学位后，威廉姆斯搬回了家乡圣地亚哥，开始在一家医院的病理实验室工作。这并不是他的第一选择。"我有志于上医学院，但太昂贵了。"仅仅是申请医学院--参加医学院入学考试(320美元)、申请费和去学校面试的行程--就可能花费数千美元。而四年制医学院的学费更是高昂：从公立学校州内学生每年约3.5万美元到私立学校或州外学生每年6万美元。最后，威廉姆斯选择在家乡附近的国立大学报读了一个公共卫生硕士课程，在那里，他的学位总费用约为3万美元。他开始每月支付500美元的本科贷款。疫情使他暂时搁置了付款，但 "这将是堆积起来的，"他说。威廉姆斯为了支付他的硕士学位，借了更多的贷款，他还没有开始偿还这些贷款。他说他已经不堪重负了。"我欠了很多钱，"威廉姆斯说。

而幸运的柯克兰本来应该和威廉姆斯一样在2018年毕业，但由于一些经济援助方面的原因，柯克兰推迟了一年毕业，这反而使得他获得了一个接受亿万富翁资助的机会：亿万富翁罗伯特-F-史密斯（Robert F. Smith）在2019届的毕业典礼上给学生们带来了惊喜，承诺帮他们偿还所有学生债务。这份礼物意味着柯克兰不必像他的父母一样面临沉重的学生贷款压力和信用分数较低带来的限制，事实上他的父亲才刚刚还清自己的学生贷款，就不得不为柯克兰就读莫尔豪斯大学承担了更多的贷款。而现在没有了债务，柯克兰留在了亚特兰大，和女友住在一起。他的信用分数很高，这让其他类型的重大决定触手可及。"如果我想买房子，我可以买房子。如果我想贷款创业，我可以做到。至于学生贷款这个巨大的负担，我就不用担心了。"柯克兰说。

这份亿万富翁的礼物即展现了这个国家巨大的贫富差距，也是对学生债务危机严重性的提醒。亿万富翁史密斯花费了3400万美元，占他60亿美元的净资产不到1%。然而，根据美联储的数据，3月份美国学生贷款债务为近1.7万亿美元，史密斯的帮助只是杯水车薪。根据学校的说法，一个莫尔豪斯的学生毕业时通常会背负3.5万到4万美元的学生贷款债务。根据布鲁金斯学会2016年的一项研究，毕业后，美国黑人平均比白人同龄人多欠7400美元。史密斯的捐赠对2019年毕业的大约400名学生和他们的家长来说价值3400万美元，也为一场“背负学生债务对人生的长期影响”的经济实验创造了完美的条件。事实上，莫尔豪斯已经开始研究其影响。就在1年后的今天，效果已经变得很明显。

The two young men started at the same college, on the same day, and financed their education the same way: by going deep into debt. Today, Elie Kirkland is so financially secure that, at age 24, he’s thinking of buying a home. Richard Williams, also 24, is in such a hole that he deferred his dreams of becoming a doctor. Their stories reflect a remarkable sequence of events at Morehouse College, a historically black men’s school in Atlanta. The Morehouse Class of 2019 hit the American college equivalent of the lottery: Billionaire Robert F. Smith surprised its members at graduation with an extraordinary pledge to pay off their student debt. It was only a quirk of bureaucracy that kept Kirkland in the money. He was supposed to graduate, like Williams, in 2018. But because of financial aid complications, Kirkland delayed graduation by a year and landed in the class that received Smith’s gift. “If I want to buy a house, I can buy a house. If I want to take out a loan to start a business, I can do that,” said Kirkland, who had been more than $30,000 in debt. “It’s a huge burden that I just don’t have to worry about.” The gift was a reminder of both the country’s vast wealth gap as well as the magnitude of the student-debt crisis. It cost Smith less than 1% of his net worth, which is estimated to be about $6 billion. And it was a drop in the bucket of U.S. student loan debt, which stood at nearly $1.7 trillion in March, according to the Federal Reserve. Smith declined to be interviewed for this story. For recipients, it could be quite literally life changing. A Morehouse student usually graduates with between $35,000 and $40,000 in student loan debt, according to the school. Upon graduating, Black Americans owe $7,400 more on average than their white peers, according to a 2016 study by the Brookings Institution. Smith’s donation was worth $34 million to roughly 400 students and their parents. The surprise gift created the perfect conditions for an economic experiment about the long-term effects of starting off life with a pile of student debt. In fact, Morehouse plans to study its impact. But just a year later, the effects are becoming evident.

After graduating in 2018 with a degree in biology and public health, Williams moved back to his hometown of San Diego and started working at a hospital pathology laboratory. It wasn’t his first choice. “I had aspirations to go to medical school, but everything is so expensive,” he said. Simply applying to medical school — taking the Medical College Admission Test ($320), application fees and trips to interview at schools — can cost thousands of dollars. Williams enrolled in a public-health master’s program at nearby National University, where it will cost him around $30,000, total, for the degree. He started making the $500-a-month payments toward his undergraduate loans. The pandemic has put payments on hold, for now, but “it’s going to stack up,” he said. Williams took out more loans to pay for his master’s, and he hasn’t started paying those off. He says he’s overwhelmed. “I owe a lot of money,” Williams said. “It’s been a challenge.”

For Kirkland, the lack of debt has meant he doesn’t have to face some of the same obstacles as his parents. He and his four siblings grew up in East Lansing, Michigan. His parents always stressed the importance of financial health because they struggled with their own credit card and student-loan debt, and they had low credit scores. “They were handicapped,” he said. In fact, his dad had only just paid off his own student loans when he took on more to pay for Morehouse. (Smith’s gift also covered loans taken out by parents.) Now debt free, he stayed in Atlanta, where he lives with his girlfriend. His credit score is high enough that it puts other types of big decisions within reach, such as swapping his rent payment for a similar mortgage payment on a house. He’s been working as a vocal coach and hopes to start his own business.  source

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