Billionaire Pays Off College Debt, Inspires Others

DALLAS — He’s a family man now.

Father to a daughter and a son.

“I was raised by a strong black woman. I have two amazing sisters. But Morehouse was that place where I felt I learned to be a young Black man in America,” Ross Jordan said.

Jordan grew up in North Texas. His sisters went to college – one attended the University of North Texas and the other Louisiana State.

At DeSoto High School, Jordan set his sights on Morehouse, a historically black college for men, because a campus tour “felt like home.”

His acceptance meant a financial stretch for his family, but they were determined to make Morehouse happen. They were almost stretched too thin as his sophomore year was getting underway.

“Maybe three weeks before school started, I was told I needed about $10,000. We didn’t have it. And there was no way I was gonna get it in a short period of time,” Jordan said.

But his mother wouldn’t let her son’s dream abruptly end.

Morehouse is in Atlanta, and a family friend lived there, too. It meant free room and board, as long as he could find a way to commute to the Morehouse campus.

But he didn’t have a car.

His mom back home in Duncanville did. So, she gave it to him.

For six months, Jordan’s sister made multiple trips a week from her college classes in Denton to the family home in Duncanville just so their mom could get groceries or get to doctors’ appointments.

It was a shared sacrifice.

On a sunny day in May 2019, with Ross in a cap and gown and his family in the audience, he was to cross the stage with the Morehouse degree they collectively earned. But first came a speech from billionaire investor and philanthropist Robert Smith.

“The thing that most people don’t remember is it was a lengthy speech,” Jordan said. “And it was hot. We were outside. We had our parents texting us like, alright, it’s time to wrap it up.”

Just as Smith was wrapping it up, he announced a life-changing gift. Smith’s family made a grant to eliminate the student loans of Jordan’s entire graduating class.

“And it took us a moment to say, wait, did he just say that?” Jordan remembered. “And then we just went crazy.”

WFAA first profiled Jordan the next day. Somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000 of debt was instantly wiped out. But Smith’s gift came with a challenge.

“I know my class will make sure they pay this forward,” he said at the end of his speech. “And we will show it through our actions and our words and our deeds.”

Being debt-free after earning his bachelor’s set Jordan on a path to continue his education. He earned a master’s in curriculum and teaching from Columbia University in 2021. And in 2025, he graduated from Ohio State with a PhD in kinesiology with a concentration in physical education and a specialization in disability studies.

He’s now officially Dr. Ross Jordan.

He finished at Ohio State and moved back to North Texas with Smith’s challenge still ringing in his ears.

“I was helping people out with applications to graduate school, things of that nature, but this past summer I saw some students on a college tour. And I made a Facebook post like, what if we took kids on an HBCU tour?”

“Someone told me, don’t think it, just do it.”

So he launched the Pay it Forward Project, an organization “focused on empowering young students to experience what it means to feel that they belong in a certain space,” Jordan explained.

That space is college. During spring break, Pay it Forward is taking 27 students from about a dozen North Texas high schools on their own HBCU tour. They’ll visit 10 campuses in five days.

Everything is lined up, Jordan said, but he’s hoping to raise additional funds so he can enhance the experience.

“I called it the ‘Born to Belong Tour,’ because when we go into these spaces, I want them to be themselves. Be your authentic self because you were born for this moment. You belong,” he said.

On his mother’s side, Ross was the first boy to go to college.

“So there was no blueprint for me,” he said.

The tour is about providing a blueprint to those coming next.

“That’s how this thing will keep going. If we give it to them, they’ll give it to the next, and it’ll be amazing when we look back,” he said.