Students in America have a collective amount of $1.75 trillion in student loan debt and it’s proven to be quite the crutch once they graduate from school.
Lucky for the graduating seniors at the LA arts school, Otis College of Art and Design, they were given the best surprise when they heard that they weren’t going to be going home with just a diploma that showed off their hard work. While getting ready to make their graduation walk in their cap and gown, they would find out that they were to receive an undisclosed record-breaking gift.
The class of 2022, which consists of 284 students, was given over $10 million to pay off their debt by the Spiegel Family Fund owned by Snapchat co-creator, Evan Spiegel, who also happens to be the most successful alumni of the school. Plus, his wife, Australian former model and ex-wife of Orland Bloom, Miranda Kerr, who is also a partner for the foundation, even added to the gift through her own company, Kora Beauty.
Spiegel, who happened to take summer classes at the Otis school during his high school days, shared with the graduating class, “It changed my life and made me feel at home. I felt pushed and challenged to grow surrounded by super talented artists and designers, and we were all in it together.”
After the federal government decided to begin guaranteeing student loans back in 1965, universities also realized that it was not the teenager attending college that was paying for school, but in fact all the taxpayer base of the United States, which is why tuition costs have risen so quickly, supposedly growing faster than any other means of inflation across the country.
For students at Otis, their education can cost them up to $50,000 for a liberal arts degree. But there are those who have loans of $70,000 or even more. Thankfully, Spiegel’s incredible generosity will erase this burden from these graduate’s lives, more so now that the pandemic has added further strain on graduates looking for new jobs.
In fact, some of these seniors explained exactly how his very generous graduate gift was a ‘huge weight off their shoulders.’
According to the president of Otis College of Art and Design, Charles Hirschhorn, in an article with Business Wire, “Student debt weighs heavily on our diverse and talented graduates. We hope this donation will provide much-deserved relief and empower them to pursue their aspirations and careers, pay this generosity forward, and become the next leaders of our community.”
In an interview with the LA Times, one of the 2022 graduates, Farhan Fallahifiroozi, said, “My mom was crying. They were so worried about it for me. I had so much debt. If it’s really all gone, it puts me so much ahead.”
Here is a video of the graduating students when they found out the incredible news. The hope is that other students struggling to pay their student loans off will somehow also receive a miracle just like this. Who knows, maybe Spiegel’s foundation isn’t completely done making students’ dreams come true.
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