Traditional student loans are drying up and college tuition costs are soaring. Enter GreenNote, a Redwood City, Calif.-based startup that has developed an online service for students to hit up friends and family willing to help foot the bill for school. Here's how it works: students create an online profile listing their university and how much they're trying to raise, then enter the e-mail addresses of people in their network for GreenNote to solicit. Loans are paid off within ten years at a fixed 6.8% interest rate, similar to a government-subsidized Stafford loan. The downside - there is little protection for lenders and the site doesn't run credit checks on borrowers. The company says about 6,000 students have used the site.
By Michal Lev-Ram
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