Reinvention

Billionaire Created a Perfect Experiment by Erasing $34 Million in Student Debt

Two recent Morehouse graduates are starting their lives in very different places.

The Morehouse College in Atlanta.Photographer: Elijah Nouvelage/Bloomberg
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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.