00:00Today on Forbes, these billionaires are stepping up as HBCUs are squeezed by student loan cuts.
00:08Antonio Sweeney relied on a mix of private and school scholarships,
00:12plus a federal Pell Grant for low-income students,
00:15to pay for his first two years at his dream school, Morehouse College, in Atlanta,
00:20the alma mater of Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia, and Martin Luther King Jr.
00:25But, by junior year, most of the outside scholarship money was used up,
00:31and he had taken on so many activities, from serving as class president to running his own side businesses,
00:36that he hadn't earned enough credits to keep his Morehouse academic scholarship.
00:41He filled the gap that year by taking out federal and private student loans.
00:45Now, in his senior year, his mother has come to the rescue.
00:49She borrowed $24,419 this fall from the federal Parent PLUS program
00:54and plans to tap a similar amount for the spring semester.
00:58His mother, Sylvia Triplett, a Flint, Michigan, special education teacher,
01:03still paying off her own student loans, says,
01:05quote,
01:06We're almost at the finish line, and if this is what's needed to be done for him to complete his education,
01:11then as a parent, I'm willing to do it.
01:14Sweeney and Triplett shared their story with Forbes for a good reason.
01:18As part of President Donald Trump's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act,
01:22beginning next July 1st, new Parent PLUS borrowers will be limited to $20,000 per school year
01:28and $65,000 over a student's school career.
01:32Sweeney worries, quote,
01:34It's going to force families to have to decide to tell their kids,
01:37Hey, we don't have enough money for you to go to your dream school.
01:41They're not the only ones thinking about the problems students at historically black colleges and universities,
01:46or HBCUs, have had financing their studies.
01:50On October 13th, the Family Foundation of Arthur Blank,
01:53the owner of the Atlanta Falcons and co-founder of Home Depot,
01:57committed $50 million over the next 10 years to, quote,
02:00gap the scholarships for students at four Atlanta HBCUs.
02:05The grants are meant to fill financial shortfalls left after students have exhausted
02:09all their other scholarship, grant, and loan options,
02:13and will go mostly to juniors and seniors who might otherwise drop out for lack of funds.
02:18Blank had made smaller gifts to the schools before, for specific infrastructure or sports.
02:24But in an email to Forbes, he explained that, quote,
02:26Blank added that while he's aware of the, quote,
02:47broader conversations around student debt and borrowing,
02:50the gift isn't a response to that, but to the needs of, quote,
02:54real students in our community.
02:56Meanwhile, private equity billionaire Robert F. Smith
03:00is planning to expand his Student Freedom Initiative,
03:03which now makes low-cost loans to HBCU undergraduates,
03:07to graduate students,
03:08who will be hit by the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill's
03:11new limits on graduate student loans.
03:13And in September, Mackenzie Scott,
03:16a novelist, philanthropist, and former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos,
03:20made a $70 million gift to the United Negro College Fund
03:23to help build endowments for its 37-member private HBCUs.
03:29Scott, Smith, and Blank are all Forbes 400 members and signatories of the Giving Pledge,
03:35a commitment from some of the world's richest individuals
03:37to give away the majority of their wealth during their lifetimes or in their wills.
03:42Chronically underfunded for decades,
03:44the nation's 107 HBCUs and their students rely heavily on federal loans.
03:51In 2019-2020, 65% of HBCU undergraduates took out federal loans
03:57and 18% had parents who tapped PLUS loans,
04:01compared to 36% of students borrowing
04:03and just 4% of parents borrowing for undergraduates as a whole.
04:07For full coverage, check out Danielle Kemptob's piece on Forbes.com.
04:14This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes.
04:16Thanks for tuning in.
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