What is Collegecoin?
Our mission is to help college students graduate debt-free and increase access to education around the world. To accomplish that mission, we introduce Collegecoin, a college funding platform powered by Stellar, and College Wallet, a multi-asset universal wallet for students and their families.
Rising tuition costs, a predatory student loan industry, and an absence of consumer protections for students have all created a crisis that threatens human progress. Student loan debt approached $1.5T in 2017 , making it the second highest consumer debt category. The average student leaves college with almost $40K in student debt, often requiring high monthly payments for over a decade after graduation. Defaults on student loans are around 40% and rising.
The student debt crisis is predominantly an American one, but many problems related to funding and educational access prevail around the world. There are still parts of the world where less than 3% of young adults are able to gain higher education , lacking access to teachers, classrooms, and learning materials, or due to political, cultural, or other factors . Fortunately, distance education is transforming the way humanity acquires knowledge and has the potential to make a big impact in less developed parts of the world when combined with greater access to funding.
Globally, the education sector is significantly under invested relative to other sectors. A 2015 survey showed that 58% of capital allocated to impact investing flows towards housing, agriculture, energy, and micro-finance, compared with only 2% invested in education.
We believe that many of these challenges can be overcome by leveraging amazing partnerships and technology to increase family contributions, private donations, impact investments, and other non-predatory capital deployed towards education.
Forty years ago, Bill Gates and Paul Allen had a dream about the impact they could make. They envisioned a future with a computer on every desk and in every home. We have a similarly ambitious vision for the future where every student in the world has a access to the funding and educational programs needed to achieve a meaningful and sustainable livelihood.