Creative Way to Pay off College Loans Jessy

With college costs soaring every year, more students are getting heavier loans to pay for tuition fees. Recently some creative ways to lessen the burden become popular and they are accomplished through online organizations like SponsorChange.org, IndieGoGo, CharityforDebt, and ChipIn. These organizations not only provide students borrowers volunteering opportunities, but also directly connect them with donors willing to help. By conducting volunteering work, students can exchange for money and enhance their resumes simultaneously. For example, Breanna Zwart, a 2007 graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, earned $400 totally for volunteering for five hours at a local senior center’s spa in four sessions. The other way is to reach out the masses and ask for microdonations straight forward with the help of social networking. Max Stephenson from New York University raised more than $12,000 within two years. Compared to Max, Jacqueline Merkher, 22, a trained artist with a Pratt Institute undergraduate degree was unlucky to only collect $850. While the success of Max lies in newness and boldness, with more students joining the campaign, people might become numb and unaffordable to the urgency of tuition fees. Ensuing effort made by some websites is to give donors something meaningful in return, and launch special programmes like a pilot program in 2011. I think these approaches to pay for tuition fees are really creative and have done great good to some students, and they tend to be more popular with more students joining the campaign; however, once the demands of students exceeds the saturation point, then the effectiveness of methods will get discounted. At this point innovation and creativity can save the situation. In this case, the saturation point refers to the maximum of money people are willing to donate and volunteering opportunities they can provide. Just as a big cake is shared among too many people, everyone can only get a small slice. We can discern that Max Stephenson sets an example for students struggling with the soaring costs, and then they imitate his behaviour to turn to those social networking sites. When many copycats came into sight, they did not receive a satisfying result. Comparing Max and those copycats, we find that Max actually acts as a pioneer, who has discovered a potential market, while other followers verify the value of the market and then attempt to take up part of it. Usually they will not live up to their expectations unless they improve the original idea significantly. The quote by Albert Einstein “problem cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them” emphasizes the importance of creativity as well as innovation. Indeed, this case can be extended to real life. The battle on markets of smartphones between Apple and other companies has become fiercer, but iphone always has its place in the market. (Jeff,2010) Because Apple products has device consolidation, this characteristic distinguishes itself from other smartphones. In conclusion, following others all the way will never make you beyond the first original one, so what is more important is innovation and creativity. In this article some organizations have adjusted the policy and advocated that students give something meaningful in return, therefore we may look forward to more microdonations brought by the improvement. Reference: Jeff. V, January 25,2010, Best Smartphone for IT: Blackberry vs. iPhone vs. Android, Retrieved from: http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/mowi/article.php/3860411/Best-Smartphone-for-IT-Blackberry-vs-iPhone-vs-Android.htm