CourseWise Wins Top Prize in the 2025 Tools Competition

Tackling the Transfer Credit Crisis

America’s transfer system is failing the very students it was meant to empower. Each year, hundreds of thousands of students move between educational institutions in search of opportunity: a better program, a lower cost, a second chance. Yet, nearly half of their hard-earned credits – 43% – vanish in the process. Behind that number are wasted semesters, forgone financial aid, and millions in tuition dollars paid for learning that no longer “counts”. For students, this means delayed graduation, mounting debt, and dreams put on hold. For institutions, this means overworked faculty and staff, manually reviewing thousands of syllabi on top of other critical duties.

CourseWise was born to revolutionize this process. Emerging from a decade of research at UC Berkeley’s Computational Approaches to Human Learning (CAHL) lab, our platform uses advanced natural language processing (NLP) to truly understand course information and objectives. We don’t just match keywords or rely on clunky transfer chains; we look to learn the conceptual and pedagogical intent behind a course: the what, how, and why.

By continually expanding and analyzing our database – hundreds of thousands of course descriptions and equivalency rules – CourseWise enables institutions to evaluate articulations at unprecedented speed and accuracy, retaining the final decision with expert faculty and staff reviewers. The result: faster credit acceptance, lighter administrative workload, and a system that appropriately recognizes our students’ value.

A Transformative Award to Scale Our Mission

The Tools Competition’s support will enable us to:

• Keep CourseWise at the vanguard of transforming transfer and credit mobility;
• Advance cutting-edge research alongside UC Berkeley’s Computational Approaches to Human Learning (CAHL) research lab;
• Expand national partnerships (e.g., ATAIN, NASH, CCA) that amplify our mission and impact; and,
• Scale our platform to support more institutions, policies, and students nationwide.

About the Tools Competition

The Tools Competition is the world’s largest EdTech competition. In 2025, the program awarded more than $3,000,000 to twenty winning teams from eight countries, projected to reach 1,000,000+ learners and educators by the end of 2025. The competition is a program of Renaissance Philanthropy, organized by The Learning Agency, and supported by the Walton Family Foundation, Griffin Catalyst, Axim Collaborative, Oak Foundation, and Calbright College.