“I was, I think, a little overawed by the jump from a rather anonymous school to a big prestigious campus in the big city and decided I was in,” he told me. It was the peak of the financial crisis; the only other immediate option was to stick around his college town and wait for his girlfriend to graduate. He ended up taking out over $60,000 in student loans to cover his year in the program. More than a decade later, his payments still haven’t dented the principal.