Why I Believe Education Should Never Cost Someone Their Future

I've been in higher education long enough to have celebrated a lot of graduations. I've watched first-generation students walk across stages their parents never imagined they'd see. And I've watched a quieter thing happen a few months later, when the loan statements arrive and a degree that was supposed to open doors starts feeling like a bill for having dared to hope.

Education is one of the most powerful forces I've ever seen for changing the trajectory of a family. But somewhere along the way, we started treating access and affordability as if they were separate problems. They are not. Access without affordability is a trap dressed up as an opportunity.

The students I worry about most are the ones who did everything right — chose a practical major, worked through school, borrowed only what they had to — and still crossed the finish line into a decade of payments that shape every decision they make afterward. Whether to take a lower-paying job in the field they love. Whether to move for opportunity. Whether to start a family. Whether to save.

This is why I founded Borrowed Dreams Foundation. Not because scholarships alone will solve the student debt crisis — they won't. But because every student we help finish their degree with less debt is a family whose future is genuinely freer. That matters, one student at a time, until the systems around them catch up.

Education should be the beginning of someone's life, not a lien on it. Until that's true for everyone, there is work to do — and I intend to keep doing it.