Money is what drives businesses. While there are a lot of factors going into entrepreneurship, money has to be the #1 reason why a new business succeeds or fails. Start-ups run out of capital, entrepreneurs go back to their day jobs because of financial constraints, and most college students take their innovation straight to a large company where it gets squashed just to pay off their student loan debt.

It’s been a while since I’ve thought about my student loans (thanks to auto-pay), but I was reminded of them after reading all 141 comments left when Ramit Sethi asked his readers to tell him about their debt. The stories were just incredible—I thought my (currently, after 7 years of payment) $28K in loans was bad until I read stories of recent grads being in debt for several times that amount. The overall implications and financial burdens on the lives of the commenters is just astounding.

Considering this amount of debt, it is pretty obvious why most post-grads would want a stable job vs pursuing entrepreneurship. Their loans payments start just a few months after graduation, and who would want to add to their existing debt by taking out a business loan? This is why we are losing a lot of potential innovation in this country, because those new grads are wasting away in corportate America instead of using the cutting-edge technology they just experimented with while in college.

I don’t have the answers, only more questions. How can we encourage innovation by changing the structure of post-college debt in this country? Is there any end to this trend with college costs rising every year? Who will pass us up when our innovators (at any level) can’t afford to innovate?