Billionaire pledges to pay student debt for 2019 class

Level 1 l Pre-intermediate / Intermediate

1 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

2 Key words
Complete the sentences using these key words from the text. The paragraph numbers will help you.

cheer loan investor spreadsheet debt

1. An ____________________ uses their money with the aim of making a profit from it, for example by buying
shares in a company. (para 1)
2. A ____________________ is an amount of money that you owe. (para 1)
3. If people ____________________, they give a loud shout of happiness or approval. (para 1)
4. A ____________________ is an amount of money that a person borrows, especially from a bank. (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)

calculate low-income burden primary donate

6. If you ____________________ a number or an amount, you discover it using mathematics. (para 3)

7. A ____________________ is a serious or difficult responsibility that you have to deal with. (para 3)
8. In the USA, a ____________________ is an election in a particular state in which people choose their
candidate for president. (para 4)
9. ____________________ means not having or earning much money. (para 6)
10. If you ____________________, you give money to an organization, especially to a school, hospital, political
party or charity. (para 7)

3 Find the information

Find the following information in the text as quickly as possible.
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 the student debt of the
2019 class?
4. What is the total unpaid student debt in the USA?
5. What are HBCUs?
6. What job did Robert F Smith train to do?
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NEWS LESSONS / Billionaire pledges to pay student debt for 2019 class / Pre-intermediate / Intermediate
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Billionaire pledges to pay student debt for 2019 class
Level 1 l Pre-intermediate / Intermediate
Billionaire pledges to pay student
debt for 2019 class at historic black
US college
Martin Pengelly
19 May, 2019
1 During 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 pay the
student debt of the entire class of 2019. For a few
seconds, there was a shocked silence, and then
the nearly 400 graduating seniors
started cheering.
2 “On behalf of the eight generations of my family
that have been in this country, we’re going to help
you a bit,” Smith said. “This is my class, 2019.
And my family is making a grant to pay their
student loans.” Smith had already announced a
$1.5m gift to the college. His offer to end student
debt for the 2019 class was estimated at
$40 million.
3 Aaron Mitchom, a 22-year-old finance major,
said he had prepared a spreadsheet 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 disappeared. Mitchom cried. “I can delete
that spreadsheet,” he said. “I was shocked. We
all cried. In the moment, a burden was removed.”
4 Unpaid student debt in the US, which was $1.5
trillion in 2018, has become a major national
problem. It has now become an issue in the
Democratic presidential primary. In April, 2019,
the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren
published a plan to cancel much student debt and
make public college free, paid for by a tax on the
super-rich.
5 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 refinance debt
at a lower interest rate while Kamala Harris of
California said “we need a commitment to
debt-free college, which I support”.
© Springer Nature Limited 2019. Macmillan Education is part of the Springer Nature Group.
NEWS LESSONS / Billionaire pledges to pay student debt for 2019 class / Pre-intermediate / Intermediate
6 Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana,
has made a proposal to make college debt-free
for low-income students. It says: “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.”
7 Morehouse is an all-male HBCU. Smith, who is
African American, trained to become an engineer
and 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
list of richest Americans.
8 Morehouse president, David A Thomas, said
Smith’s gift would have an enormous effect.
“Many of my students,” he said, “want to become
teachers, for example, but their student debt
makes that impossible. In some ways, this gift
just opened up the choices for these
young men.”
9 Tonga Releford, a parent of a Morehouse
student, said her son’s student loans were about
$70,000. “I feel like it’s my birthday all over
again,” she said. Her husband, Charles, also a
Morehouse graduate, said their younger son was
a junior. “Maybe Smith will come back next year,”
he said.
© Guardian News and Media 2019
First published in The Guardian, 19/05/19
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Billionaire pledges to pay student debt for 2019 class
Level 1 l Pre-intermediate / Intermediate
4 Comprehension check
Match the beginnings and endings to make statements about the text.

1. The 400 graduating students …
2. One student estimated that it would take him …
3. The Democratic presidential candidates …
4. Robert F Smith …
5. Only male students …
6. Student debt makes it impossible ...
a. … 25 years to pay back his student loan.
b. … is the 355th richest American.
c. … were very surprised by Robert F Smith’s
announcement.
d. … study at Morehouse College.
e. … for some students to become teachers.
f. … have different policies on student debt.

5 Chunks
Rearrange the words to make phrases from the text.

1. problem major a national

2. the a rich tax on super
3. further the of education cost
4. lower at rate a interest
5. students low- for free debt- income
6. his salary half monthly

6 Two-word phrases
Match the words in the left-hand column with those in the right-hand column to make expressions from
the text.

1. student a. income
2. further b. investor
3. low- c. salary
4. interest d. loan
5. technology e. rate
6. monthly f. education
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NEWS LESSONS / Billionaire pledges to pay student debt for 2019 class / Pre-intermediate / Intermediate
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 Billionaire pledges to pay student debt for 2019 class
Level 1 l Pre-intermediate / Intermediate
7 Word stress
Put these words from the text into two groups according to their stress.

major silence issue surprise invest effect

support vital publish spreadsheet receive

A 0 o B o 0

8 Discussion
• Should college/university education be free? Why? Why not?

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NEWS LESSONS / Billionaire pledges to pay student debt for 2019 class / Pre-intermediate / Intermediate
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Billionaire pledges to pay student debt for 2019 class
Level 1 l Pre-intermediate / Intermediate
KEY

1 Warmer 5 Chunks

1. d 1. a major national problem

2. c 2. a tax on the super-rich
3. b 3. the cost of further education
4. a 4. at a lower interest rate
5. debt-free for low-income students
6. half his monthly salary
2 Key words

1. investor 6 Two-word phrases

2. debt
3. cheer 1. d
4. loan 2. f
5. spreadsheet 3. a
6. calculate 4. e
7. burden 5. b
8. primary 6. c
9. low-income
10. donate
7 Word stress

3 Find the information A 0 o B o 0

1. nearly 400 major surprise

2. eight silence invest
3. $40 million issue effect
4. $1.5 trillion vital support
5. historically black colleges and universities publish receive
6. engineer spreadsheet

4 Comprehension check

1. c
2. a
3. f
4. b
5. d
6. e
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NEWS LESSONS / Billionaire pledges to pay student debt for 2019 class / Pre-intermediate / Intermediate
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