Bangladesh

One of the best-known efforts to finance higher education is being made through rural banking and rural welfare agencies in Bangladesh. Grameen rural Bank programs have proposed a much-praised Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) to help needy and promising college students through an annual loan; this program has been inspired by a successful effort of granting micro credit to the rural poor in Bangladesh. Also developing is a parallel system to help loan recipients in finding and maintaining jobs after graduation. If these programs succeed, they can be emulated in other poverty-stricken, Third World countries where large scale educationrelated issues are common.