We are a US-German family. My partner was raised and educated in Germany before building an academic career that has spanned universities in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
Few families have direct exposure to this many higher education systems. That breadth is what makes our perspective different.
International higher education was always part of our conversation. As friends and extended family navigated the American college process, we saw the same pattern repeatedly: stress, disappointment, six-figure tuition projections, and a narrow understanding of what options actually exist.
For our own family, this was not a theoretical decision. I wanted my daughter to get a serious education without taking on decades of student loan debt. I wanted her degree to mean something when she came back to the United States. And I wanted her to spend those years living in another country. Years spent living and studying in another country shape a person in ways that the same time in another US state does not. Those priorities led us to the path we chose.
We toured campuses from Oxford to LMU Munich, and our daughter is currently enrolled at the University of Amsterdam. I have seen firsthand how different higher education systems function, and how American students fit into them.
The American college process has become both more expensive and more competitive.
Meanwhile, serious international universities have always existed. They simply have not been part of the standard American college conversation.
For some families the financial case alone makes the international path worth pursuing. For others it is the academic structure, the credential portability, or the long-term flexibility that opens the door. What I have consistently seen is that families who evaluate these options deliberately discover pathways they had not previously considered.
Families are not paying for information. They are paying for clarity, judgment, and confidence in a decision that will shape both finances and opportunity.
I built Latitude to ensure that families have the chance to evaluate those options before committing to one path by default.
I run Latitude as a small, selective practice by design. I work with a limited number of families each year so that every engagement receives focused attention and consistent availability.
I hold an MBA from Bayes Business School in London and have spent my career in professional environments where long-term decisions carry real financial consequences.
