NC State graduates showed up for a commencement speech. They left with their senior-year loans paid off

College graduation is undoubtedly a momentous occasion and one to be celebrated. But it also marks the moment when students leave their bubble and enter the real world, facing the massive task of finding a job and starting to pay down their student loans. 

But Anil Kochhar, the commencement speaker at North Carolina State University’s Wilson College of Textiles, helped ease some of that anxiety with a surprise announcement that he’d be covering the final-year education loans for every graduate of that school who had taken out loans during the 2025-2026 academic year. 

Other publications have cited 176 bachelor’s degree recipients, with Axios reporting another 26 master’s degree recipients; NC State declined to confirm to Fortune how many borrowers would ultimately receive relief or the specifics of the loan details. A spokesperson told Fortune, however, that Kochhar’s philanthropy “provides substantial reductions in students’ debt load, which will make a meaningful impact on their ability to pursue careers with reduced debt burdens.”

Kochhar is the cofounder and former vice chairman of Outcomes Health Information Solutions, a healthcare technology company, according to Bloomberg. Despite his father’s deep ties to NC State’s textile program, his own career has been in healthcare IT. He’s also a Raleigh native and graduate of Broughton High School, and........

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