10 years ago, I got screwed.

Like millions of students before and after me, I transferred colleges. A year later, I learned I lost most of my college credits.

The cost: another $60,000 and another year of my life. I couldn't believe it.

I was so annoyed and I couldn't let it go. So I built a tool leveraging existing information to get my credits back. It worked.

It saved me $60,000. My friends tried it and it saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Helping each friend should have felt great, but I got more frustrated. Each win furthered a realization: this is all totally preventable.

Why are people running into problems with the education system?

Well, it probably starts when we tell 17-18 year olds to make multi-hundred thousand dollar life-altering decisions with little to no information.

Then we confuse them more by telling them to go get financial “aid.” Unfortunately, most dollars branded as financial “aid” are just huge loans with high interest rates that loom over you for life.

From there, we tell them to go figure it out, and to no surprise, kids end up making common mistakes: taking classes that don’t count towards graduation, picking the wrong major, credits not transferring, and many more.

This led to some unintended consequences: longer graduation times and insane student debt. Debt that slows people down from buying a house, having kids, or from taking risks and betting on themselves.

But like I said, this is all preventable, so what’s the actual cause?

No one knows, literally.

There’s a huge lack of information problem for all participants of the education system: students, parents, high schools, community colleges, four-year universities, and governments.

Students don’t have information on where to go, what classes to take, and how to save money. Parents feel like they can’t help fix that.

High schools are understaffed on counselors, who are already strapped for time. Is it really their responsibility to sift through all the information themselves and to create a personalized plan for every student?

Community colleges and four-year universities have a lot of important information to manage: credits, requirements, agreements, etc. Unfortunately there isn't great tooling to manage that information internally and with students.

Governments don’t have any more information than the aforementioned parties, but this has become a socioeconomic crisis, which pulls them in too.

The core problem is a lack of information problem. This created an inefficient education system. One where there are no winners.

Fixing the information problem makes the education system efficient.

It turns out the classes, colleges, pricing arbitrage, the dollars, and all of the infrastructure needed to make education efficient already exists today.

It’s just the information problem. Make that information transparent, accessible, and accurate and you make the education system efficient for everyone.

That’s why we started Tasseled. Our first product, degree planner, is the first step towards an efficient education system.

It helps students save tens of thousands of dollars on their education and navigate college with little added guidance. High schools can provide all of their students personalized college planning. Community colleges and four-year universities save thousands of hours of work, get increased transparency, and can work better together. Governments reap the benefits of helping students, parents, high schools, community colleges, and four-year universities.

Tasseled is an education logistics company building products that will follow this same theme: help every participant in the education system navigate and utilize all of its existing resources, making the education system efficient.

Why does this matter?

An efficient education system means we all win.

An efficient system is more meritocratic. Today, you have to shell out thousands for private college counselors or need to be incredibly well-connected in order to get a spot. Most people don’t have access to that, nor should they need it.

An efficient system means lower pressure. We can stop putting 17-18 year olds in high pressure environments to figure out their lives which typically puts them on a path to debt.

An efficient system means no more student debt. Student debt is a symptom of an inefficient system that has failed to utilize the hundreds of billions of dollars available. Making the system efficient permanently eliminates student debt.

An efficient system also comes with a deeply positive consequence.

Remember being told you could be anything you wanted?

At some point, we stopped believing that. It probably happened when you got to high school and were fed the same standard script: get good grades, go to a good college, and get a safe (but unfulfilling) job.

Given how the system loads people with debt, it’s a pragmatic script.

Student loans were not initially a bad thing. They enabled us to invest in our future and help us pursue our real passions and dreams. Left unchecked, these loans have inflated and caused the complete opposite of their initial intention. Now we have to pursue "safe" careers just to guarantee a salary so that we can pay back our loans.

Making the education system efficient will fix this.

People can bet on themselves and tackle the hard (but fulfilling) problems in climate, manufacturing, energy, aerospace, health, housing, and more. That will lead to more progress and fulfillment.

That was our country’s standard. That should be our standard. That’s why we’re building Tasseled.