Debt-free

Warmer:
Match the American words with their definitions.
1. college a. a third-year student (one year before the final year)
2. senior b. main subject
3. major c. a final-year student
4. junior d. university

Vocabulary:
Complete the sentences using these key words from the text. The paragraph numbers
are given to help you.

honorary spread-sheet eliminate sibling donate weep burden stunned pledge profound

1. If you ___________________ something that is not wanted or needed, you get rid
of it. (para 1)
2. If you are ___________________, you are so shocked that you can hardly speak.
(para 1)
3. An ___________________ degree is given to someone to recognize them because
of their work or something important they have done; they have not earned the
degree in the usual way. (para 2)
4. A ___________________ is a serious and public promise to do something. (para 2)
5. A ___________________ is a chart produced on a computer that shows numbers
in a way that makes them easy to compare. (para 3)
6. If you ___________________, you cry because you feel unhappy or have some
other strong emotion. (para 3)
7. A ___________________ is a serious or difficult responsibility that you have to
deal with. (para 3)
8. A ___________________ is your brother or sister. (para 4)
9. If you ___________________, you give money to an organization, especially to a
school, hospital, political party or charity. (para 8)
10. If something has a ___________________ effect, it has a serious impact on people
or on something else. (para 9)

Reading Comprehension:
Find the information
1. How many graduating students did Robert F Smith speak to?
2. How many generations of Robert F Smith’s family have been in the USA?
3. According to estimates, how much money has Robert F Smith promised to pay to
eliminate the student debt of the 2019 class?
4. What is the total unpaid student debt in the USA?


 Billionaire pledges to pay student debt for 2019 class at historic black US college
Martin Pengelly
19 May, 2019
1. Delivering a speech to graduate students at Morehouse College in Atlanta, where
Martin Luther King Jr was a student, the billionaire technology investor Robert F
Smith made a surprise announcement: his family would eliminate the student debt
of the entire class of 2019. The nearly 400 graduating seniors reacted with a
moment of stunned silence, then, unsurprisingly, the biggest cheers of the
morning.
2. “On behalf of the eight generations of my family that have been in this country,
we’re going to put a little fuel in your bus,” Smith said. “This is my class, 2019. And
my family is making a grant to eliminate their student loans.” Smith, who received
an honorary doctorate in the ceremony, had already announced a $1.5m gift to the
college. The pledge to eliminate student debt for the 2019 class was estimated at
$40m.
3. Aaron Mitchom, a 22-year-old finance major, said he had drawn up a spread-sheet
to calculate how long it would take him to pay back $200,000 in student loans. It
came to 25 years at half his monthly salary, he said. In an instant, that number
vanished. Mitchom wept. “I can delete that spread-sheet,” he said. “I was shocked.
We all cried. In the moment, a burden had been removed.”
4. His mother, Tina Mitchom, was also shocked. Eight family members, she said,
including Mitchom’s 76-year-old grandmother, took turns over four years to take
out the loans that got their student across the finish line. “It takes a lot of people,”
she said. “It now means he can give something in return and give back to the
college and maybe for his younger siblings.”
5. Unpaid student debt in the US, which was $1.5tn in 2018, has become a major
national problem. The federal education department has rejected 99% of
applications for student debt forgiveness. The issue has now become a point of
contention in the Democratic presidential primary. In April, 2019, the
Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren was praised when she published a plan to
cancel much student debt and make public college free, funded by a tax on the
super-rich.
6. There is a distinction between commitments to tuition-free college and debt-free
college, but Warren is not alone in focusing on the cost of further education. The
Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, for example, focused on it in 2016 and is doing so
again in 2019. Among other candidates, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York has said she
will allow students to re finance debt at a lower interest rate, while Kamala Harris
of California said “we need a commitment to debt- free college, which I support”.
7. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has released a proposal to make
college debt-free for low-income students. It read: “Historically Black Colleges and
Universities (HBCUs) and Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) are vital for this
country and our communities, and deserve to receive more direct support.”

 8. Morehouse is an all-male HBCU. Smith, who is African American, is an engineer by
training who has also donated to Cornell University in New York. He also studied at
Columbia. As founder and chief executive of Vista Equity Partners, a private
company that invests in technology companies, he is 355th on the 2019 Forbes list
of richest Americans.
9. Morehouse president, David A Thomas, said Smith’s gift would have a profound
effect. “Many of my students,” he said, “are interested in becoming teachers, for
example, but leave with an amount of student debt that makes that impossible. In
some ways, it was a liberation gift for these young men that just opened up their
choices.”
10. Tonga Releford, a parent of a Morehouse student, said her son’s student loans
totalled about $70,000. “I feel like it’s my birthday all over again,” she said. Her
husband, Charles Releford II, also a Morehouse graduate, said their younger son
was a junior. “Maybe Smith will come back next year,” he said.

Are these statements true (T) or false (F) according to the text?
1. The 400 graduating students were surprised by Robert F Smith’s announcement.
2. One student estimated it would take him 25 years to pay back his student loan.
3. All the Democratic presidential candidates have the same policy on student debt.
4. Robert F Smith became wealthy by working as an engineer.
5. More than half the students at Morehouse College are female.
6. Student debt makes it impossible for some students to become teachers.

Find the word
Find the following words and phrases in the text.
1. a noun meaning an amount of money that the government or an organization
gives you for a specific purpose and does not ask you to pay back (para 2)
2. a two-word phrasal verb meaning prepare something such as a document or a plan
(para 3)
3. a three-word prepositional phrase meaning happening almost immediately (para
3)
4. a verb meaning not agree to a proposal or request (para 5)
5. a three-word noun phrase meaning something that causes disagreement between
people or groups (para 5)
6. a noun meaning a difference between two things (para 6)

Discussion Discuss the statements.
• All education should be free to everyone.
• Education is an investment in the future.