Student loans. Borrow against the earnings the credential is supposed to produce.
It is a financial instrument.
It exists to relieve The credential costs more than the student has. That is the whole reason it is here: nothing enters this map without a human problem behind it.
It could not exist without Student loan law and Banking system. These are the quiet preconditions — remove any one and the solution stops working.
Solving that problem created new ones: Debt that arrives before the income does. Follow those and you find the next generation of products built on top of this one.
4 organisations in this map sell it, 3 of them publicly listed.
Its neighbourhood
Everything this entry connects to directly. Click any point to follow it.
The line back to a human being
4 hops from a person at a phase of life. The further a thing sits from the person, the more abstract it looks — and the more it tends to be mistaken for something that came from nowhere.
- SolutionStudent loans
- FrictionThe credential costs more than the student has
- SolutionUniversity
- FrictionAcquire a credential that employers will accept
- Life phaseEarly adulthood
- Rooted inScarce resources
- Rooted inStatus
- Rooted inUncertainty
Relieves
Created these new problems
Second-order frictions. This is where most of the modern economy actually lives.
Requires
Who sells it
| Organisation | Value | Type | Products |
|---|---|---|---|
| SoFi Technologies | $20B | public · SOFI | student loan refinancing, personal loans, mortgages |
| Sallie Mae (SLM) | $6B | public · SLM | private student loans |
| Navient | $1.5B | public · NAVI | student loan servicing and refinancing (Earnest) |
| US Department of Education (Federal Student Aid) | government | Direct Loans, Pell Grants, income-driven repayment |