Fewer than 15% of students in China enroll in college today, compared to the more than 45% who enroll in the United States. The problem: Many eligible students lack the ability to pay for college tuition, and the university system in China lacks the resources to help finance the tens of millions who need assistance in order to further their education.
This is a huge problem as China hopes to continue the economic boom that it experienced this past decade.
It could also be a big opportunity for the right solution that manages to connect these millions of potential students with eager lenders. Calvin Chin and his company, Qifang, hope that they have found a sustainable, successful model for making college more affordable for Chinese students.
Chin estimates that 25 million Chinese students now pay US$400 to US$2,200 a year in college tuition. If 40% of eligible college students were able to finance their education through loans, this could add up to US$10 billion in loans annually.
Qifang’s solution: an online, person-to-person lending service that gives students the means to find friends, employers or philanthropists willing to help fund their education. Qifang is one of 34 companies named as a 2009 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum. The winning companies are chosen because they are judged to offer technologies or business models that could advance the global economy.
Chin is a 35-year-old, American-born Chinese who graduated from Yale University and spent time teaching math in Brooklyn, working on Wall Street, and joining several Silicon Valley startups before moving to China in 2004.
Qifang is based on the rural credit cooperative model in China, which is a common way for students to take out loans from their own local community, and has taken the concept nationally so that students can find lenders anywhere in China. This addresses regional income disparities by facilitating borrowing from different regions, which in the past was difficult or impossible for would-be students.
The company launched in August 2007, and has already brokered 3,000 loans on its site. Qifang partners with established universities in China, which means lenders send the loan directly to the university, which builds trust in the process. By the end of the 2009, Qifang plans to have partnerships with 50 Chinese universities.
For more information, visit www.qifang.com.
I really appreciate the effort to provide students with such an important information which helps them to make decisions regarding eduacation. Nice work!
Posted by: Study in Singapore | September 10, 2009 at 11:45 PM