I’m sure that you’ve been reading about how many people owe debt from their college educations, but here is a quick review. According to the Lendedu website, more than 43.3 million people owe over $1.35 trillion in student debt. That averages out to $28,400 per borrower, $16,033 per graduate, and $57, 600 per graduate student (https://lendedu.com/blog/student-loan-debt-statistics).
Now, another statistic: There are huge amounts of unclaimed scholarship money. I’ve seen some highly inflated numbers tossed about by services who will search for scholarships for a fee, so no one knows for sure, but the consensus seems to be it’s at least $100 million. Irrespective of the exact amount, how do we get students and unawarded scholarship money together?
Meet Christopher Gray, a young man who saw the disconnect while searching for ways to pay for his own college education. It took an appearance on ABC’s program “Shark Tank” to pull it off, but he developed an app named Scholly to help match students with funding. So if you know of anyone struggling with college expenses, this might be a solution.
Read Christopher’s full story at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/financial-aide-christopher-gray-winner-smithsonian-ingenuity-awards-2016-youth-180961123/ . The photo came from http://college.usatoday.com/2015/12/23/1-3-million-shades-of-gray/ . The Scholly website can be found at https://myscholly.com/#scholly .