The other day, I heard a talk show conversation about many doctor's motivation to practice in a specialty rather than as a primary physician is often due to the salaries associated with each when weighed against the debt burden faced by med students. If you were coming out of school with a six-digit debt load, what would you do?

This made me wonder what effect debt has on entrepreneurship. How many college students come out of school with a great idea for a new business yet choose not to pursue it due to their debt load? I imagine it's a fairly significant percentage of graduates. I'll guess 10,000 per year.

Those 10,000 students, rather than creating something new and great, take jobs with secure salaries so they can start whittling down their student loans. Along the way, their life changes. Perhaps they get married, a mortgage, and have children before their college debt is finally paid off. Are they now finally in position to take an entrepreneurial risk? Of course not. They have dependents and a mortgage, which is much more to risk than they had coming out of college.

Here's the opportunity for venture capitalists: identify brilliant students coming out of college with a debt load. Pay off their loans, cover their housing costs, and give them, say, a $30,000 salary in exchange for equity in what they create. Your total costs will likely be less than $100,000 per student, which is probably less than you'd pay the same person in a traditional employer/employee relationship, yet the relationship would be more committed and likely to create something great.