Nick Cannon, photographed by David Shankbone
“Once you earn your college degree, we’re wiping out your personal student debt—every single penny,” said Cannon.
The students, from Saint Augustine’s University, North Carolina A&T State University, Winston-Salem State University and HBCUs across the nation, were gifted hundreds of thousands of dollars through Cannon’s partnership with the United Negro College Fund and the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.
On average, Black college graduates owe $25,000 more in student loan debt than their white peers, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Cannon is himself a graduate of Howard University. He said that HBCUs have “played a pivotal role in developing the brightest minds and influencers of our time.”