OAKLAND (KRON) — It’s the gift of a lifetime for Morehouse College’s Class of 2019.

Commencement speaker billionaire technology investor Robert Smith announcing these graduating students will now be debt free.

But it was shocking for 22-year-old Jordan Long who left the school over debt.

“I was such a huge surprise and there’s no way that I would have known and I’m not beating myself up about it,” Long said.

Sunday was supposed to be long’s graduation day.

The Oakland native left Morehouse two years ago.

The school is an all-male historically black college in Atlanta.

Long says he was drowning in more than $60,000 in student loans.

He decided to move back home where he is now attending community college studying business communication and marketing.

“I was just like in shock for a while, mostly like happiness because all the opportunities and the great things from my brothers in Morehouse who graduated will be able to do now with not so much debt on their backs,” he said.

Rather than focusing on what he could have had, Long is channeling the energy to the need of free quality education as a right.

“If we invested in education and ourselves then I wouldn’t and everyone else wouldn’t have so much college debt in the first place,” he said.

His father, a long time Oakland entrepreneur could not be more proud.

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