Among students carrying educational debt, 91% are first-generation college students—and 78% of them worry about the long-term financial consequences of those loans. That finding, from a recent Pell Institute study examining first-generation TRIO students, captures only part of the burden these students shoulder.
Financial strain compounds with psychological pressure. According to the Healthy Minds Study, approximately 72% of college students report moderate to severe psychological distress. First-generation students face these challenges with particular intensity: the Pell Institute found that two-thirds reported experiencing mental health difficulties, driven by the combined weight of academic expectations, financial strain, and family obligations.
Jean-Pierre Conte knows these pressures from personal experience. A 1985 graduate of Colgate University and later Harvard Business School, he was the first in his family to attend college. His father, Pierre, fled France following the Nazi occupation and built a career as a tailor and clothing salesman serving Wall Street professionals. His mother, Isabel, left Cuba seeking opportunity in America.
Conte’s $25 million gift to Colgate, announced in 2025, ranks among the largest single donations in the university’s history. The gift will fund the Jean-Pierre L. Conte Social Center, designed as a hub for student life on Colgate’s expanding Lower Campus.
“When I was at Colgate, less than 5% of the population were first-gen students like me. I want to make sure those students are starting off from a place where they will succeed,” Conte has explained.
Financial Anxiety and the First-Generation Experience
For students whose parents never attended college, the decision to pursue higher education carries financial risks that more privileged peers rarely contemplate. Without family experience to guide borrowing decisions or contextualize debt loads, first-generation students often make choices with incomplete information and outsized consequences.
The Pell Institute research documents how financial concerns saturate the first-generation student experience. Balancing tuition costs with family responsibilities and employment leaves many students managing simultaneous academic and economic pressures—burdens that don’t exist in isolation but amplify the mental health challenges that can derail academic progress.
JP Conte experienced these dynamics growing up in Brooklyn and New Jersey. He worked as a waiter to help fund his graduate education—a sacrifice that shaped his understanding of what first-generation students face.
“I grew up in a modest household that had big dreams and big aspirations, but we didn’t have a lot of resources,” Conte has shared. “What we did have was a lot of love and good family, good connections, and people who helped me along the way.”
A Hands-On Approach to Philanthropy
The Colgate gift extends a philanthropic commitment that JP Conte began years earlier through the Conte First Generation Fund. Operating at 11 universities including Colgate and Harvard, the fund provides scholarships, mentorship, and support designed to help students overcome the information gap separating them from peers with professional family networks.
Conte’s approach to educational giving is unusually direct. Rather than simply writing checks, he personally evaluates institutions to determine where resources will produce the greatest impact.
“I interviewed each school, visited each school, and learned that some of the schools were really good at it, good at providing resources, attracting that talent, and even mentoring that talent while they were at school. So they had the resources and the focus to do it,” Conte has recalled. “And other schools didn’t. They were either too small, didn’t have the resources, or both, and sometimes schools didn’t have the talent or the conviction to do it.”
This assessment allowed him to concentrate support where it would produce measurable results. The $25 million Colgate gift will anchor the university’s Lower Campus initiative, creating residential and social infrastructure for juniors and seniors as they prepare for life after graduation.
Colgate President Brian W. Casey framed the initiative in terms of the university’s broader ambitions: “Colgate intends to offer the strongest residential liberal arts education in America, and the Lower Campus initiative is key to achieving that vision.”
Reaching Students Before the Debt Accumulates
For JP Conte, supporting students at the university level addresses only part of the problem. Financial anxieties often take root years before students ever apply for college loans—which is why his philanthropy increasingly targets high school and middle school students through partnerships with Sponsors for Educational Opportunity and 10,000 Degrees in San Francisco.
“My dad came to the United States and he didn’t go to college,” Conte has said. “But he always had a dream of his kids going to college and becoming anything they wanted to be.”
That parental dream, combined with the mentorship JP Conte received through his father’s Wall Street connections, helped close what he calls “the information gap” for students whose families lack college experience.
“It’s about closing the information gap and giving these students the support they need to succeed,” Conte has noted.
What Research Suggests About Comprehensive Support
The Pell Institute findings point toward interventions that address multiple dimensions of first-generation student challenges simultaneously. Financial support matters, but so do mentorship, community belonging, and mental health resources. Students juggling academic demands, work obligations, and family responsibilities need support structures that recognize these intersecting pressures.
Total Pell Grant expenditures reached $38.6 billion in the 2024-25 academic year—a 32% increase from 2022-23, according to the College Board. Yet student borrowing persists: families and students borrowed $102.6 billion in federal and nonfederal loans during the same period.
Jean-Pierre Conte now leads family office Lupine Crest Capital following decades of building a San Francisco-based private equity firm. His $5 million gift to the University of California, San Francisco—establishing two endowed professorships focused on Parkinson’s disease research—demonstrates the same pattern of targeted, personal giving that characterizes his educational philanthropy.
For the 91% of debt-carrying students who are first-generation, the $25 million Colgate gift and the broader work of the Conte First Generation Fund represent one model: sustained investment that addresses not just tuition costs but the community infrastructure and mentorship networks that help students succeed once they arrive on campus.
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