In a moment that instantly went viral in 2019, Morehouse commencement speaker Robert F. Smith surprised graduates at the 135th ceremony with the news that he would be paying off all their student loans. Now Smith, in partnership with Live Nation Urban and the city of Atlanta, wants to help even more HBCU students struggling with loans through his Student Freedom Initiative.
According to the organization, the goal was to provide a scalable solution to the $1.7 trillion student loan debt crisis, where 43 million borrowers hold an average student loan debt balance of $38,000 each.
“If we want to really prepare and equip future generations to be able to afford college, we need scalable solutions where everyone has skin in the game,” Smith wrote in an op-ed for Time magazine last year. “Families and students across the country are faced with the rising costs of college tuition. At the rate we are going, it will take the average American family 75 years to send just one student to a top-rated university.”
The billionaire founder of Vista Equity Partners, an investment firm focused on software, data, and technology, wiped out $34 million in debt for 396 students for the historic all-male college’s Class of 2019. The unprecedented gift to the Atlanta HBCU was part of the Morehouse Student Success Program, a scholarship, loan debt, research, and educational initiative to help reduce student loan debt.
“On behalf of the eight generations of my family that have been in this country, we’re gonna put a little fuel in your bus,” Smith said at the graduation ceremony. “This is my class, 2019. And my family is making a grant to eliminate their student loans. … I know my class will make sure they pay this forward … and let’s make sure every class has the same opportunity going forward because we are enough to take care of our own community.”
Morehouse reports that on average, its students graduate with between $35,000 and $40,000 of student loan debt.
Smith’s new program, HBCU Aware Fest 2026, will launch at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena and feature music, culture, and education.
“For over a century, HBCUs have been critical drivers of the Black middle class in America and continue to be economic engines within their communities; yet, their undergraduate and graduate students are disproportionately burdened by the cost of achieving that excellence,” said Keith B. Shoates, president and CEO of Student Freedom Initiative, in a release. “Home to 10% of Black students and historically under-resourced, our HBCUs and their graduates have achieved tremendous results. Imagine what could be achieved if they had additional resources and there was a broader understanding and recognition of their contributions to the national and local economies.”
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For Atlanta, home to the crown jewel of HBCUs, Mayor Andre Dickens knew there was no better place to host the inaugural event.
“We are home to the best HBCUs in the nation at the AUC and consider Clark, Spelman, Morehouse and Morehouse School of Medicine an integral part of our family,” Dickens said in a release. “As the host city, we join Student Freedom Initiative and Live Nation Urban in launching this vital discussion, integrating the greater-Atlanta community into the planned events, highlighting our city’s Black excellence at our HBCUs and providing their scholars the resources essential to grow, learn, thrive and pitch in to Atlanta’s Group Project.”
Read More: Morehouse College Graduation: Celebrating Brotherhood and Black Excellence
Click here to learn more about HBCU Aware Fest.
