A Commencement Speaker Surprised 200 Graduates by Paying Off Their Final-Year Loans

Graduates filing into Reynolds Coliseum at North Carolina State University expected the usual commencement fare: a few words of encouragement, some advice for the road ahead. What they got instead was a surprise that will follow them for years. The speaker, alumnus Anil Kochhar, used his moment at the podium to make an announcement that drew gasps and tears across the Wilson College of Textiles.

“It is my privilege to announce today that, in honor of my father Prakash Chand Kochhar, my wife Marilyn and I are providing a graduation gift to cover all the final-year education loans incurred by Wilson College graduates,” he said. In a single sentence, the financial burden of the final year of school lifted from 176 bachelor’s recipients and 26 master’s graduates—202 young people in all.

“What they got instead was a surprise that will follow them for years.”

The gift was rooted in family history. Kochhar’s father, Prakash Chand Kochhar, had emigrated from India some 80 years earlier to study textile manufacturing, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1950 and his master’s in 1952. A scholarship in his name has supported students at the college for 40 years. With this gesture, his son extended that legacy from a few scholarship recipients to an entire graduating class.

For students who had worked and borrowed to reach that stage, the announcement reframed the start of their adult lives. Instead of stepping off the stage and into debt, they walked into the world a little lighter. One graduate, Alyssa D’Costa, was among those whose final-year loans simply vanished. It was a reminder that a single act of generosity, made in gratitude for one’s own beginnings, can ripple outward to change the trajectories of hundreds.