The Challenge

In the United States, students are borrowing at crippling levels to afford their college educations, but graduating without the tangible skills to access well-paying employment. While vocational training is gaining popularity as an alternative, financing these programs—which do not qualify for federal student loans—is a huge barrier to entry for low-income students, with many resorting instead to high-cost loans that can cause financial hardship for years to come.

The Innovation

Climb partners with training programs in every state and online to offer students affordable education loans for courses in over 25 career paths. The company’s training partners partially guarantee each Climb loan made to their students. As a result of this risk-sharing loan model, Climb can make loans to some borrowers with low or no credit scores and without requiring co-signers—conditions not typically accepted by traditional lenders.

The Impact

Climb has helped over 11,500 borrowers afford high-quality education and increase their salaries by an average of 81 percent after their training. As many as 67 percent of these borrowers reported that they could not have attended their training program without Climb’s financing.