The idea is micro loans directly to people who want to do something like buy a cow.
"Kiva loans have a historical repayment rate of about 97% (this number fluctuates slightly so check Kiva's homepage for the current rate)"
When you receive the money back you can then make another micro loan to help someone else out.
Read http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/world/14microfinance.html and Kiva's response at https://pages.kiva.org/blog/new-york-times-article-on-microf...
I understand that fraud, nepotism etc etc all get in the way.
So, the U.S. has its own student loan bubble, that many economists believe is related to the increased availability of student loans AND/OR charitable donations to scholarship funds;
Is there evidence that covering 3rd world tuition doesn't create further class divide, and/or increase the cost of tuition in general? And that perceivably "bright" students are already often the best off.
Also realize that in many places in the world with $480/year tuition are receiving education from sources that get at least some of their funding or staff from NGOs; and that in many cases, "education" is in many cases separating children from their families -- and potentially (though the result dithers morally) decreasing the entire family's ability to be self sufficient by removing productive workers (in a culture where minimum, age of laborers in lower than the U.S. 16)