Paying for College - through Unconventional Means

Are people getting really anxious about paying for college? It would appear so, going by a craigslist ad. In which a parent, alarmed about his child's student loans (that approached a quarter million dollars), offered his body to science while he was still living. Granted, this would be kind of an extreme step for any parent to take. The point though is, that unorthodox and unusual methods, these days are often necessary. Your average student has not only soaring tuition costs to contend with, but also inadequate financial aid. Paying for college, these days, is no longer just about going to college and taking up a job on the side at the library to help make ends meet. These days, you'll need to get creative and figure out how to make enough money by thinking of a new business concept or selling body parts.

How difficult is it getting for students, to pay for college with traditional means anyway? It's easy to do the math. On average, college costs have risen about 5%. That works out to about $35,000 a year. Scholarships do exist. But there is only about $4 billion in the private scholarship pot for the entire country. And they try to spread their endowments pretty thin - the average scholarship works out to be about $3000. States are so strapped for funds that to have to deal with fewer students, they have been trying to raise the standards students must meet to qualify. Still, college students are remarkably responsible and self-dependent when it comes to paying for college. Three out of four students try hard to pay their student loans themselves. Here are some of the methods they follow.

Did you know that volunteering for charitable work can not only pay well, it can even net you a scholarship? AmeriCorps, the national network of thousands of nonprofit organizations and religious foundations, has about 3000 such institutions on its network. A student, to begin with, can make about $12,000 putting in about 1500 hors of work and earn a scholarship worth $5000 for doing social work. And there are many social work-related scholarships to take advantage of over and above this as well when you serve in the AmeriCorps. Syracuse University and Duke University, for instance, have special scholarships for those who sign up to this organization.

On-campus jobs being quite rare, students need some help in a new town finding jobs. Almost every college now has a career services department and a jobs board. You'll find college students passing out flyers, taking up waitressing jobs and even getting paid medical experiment gigs. Some students start their own commercial websites when they have a bright idea of the run. Some of these business ideas can be pretty smart too. At various colleges, students are known to find success starting a designated driver company for students of the campus. When people need to get back home after a drunken party, the service sends a driver over to help drive them home. Still, the idea of getting into business for oneself may not be for everyone. Some people may just find it easier to donate semen or their eggs.

These days, paying for college is so hard, you really want to crave an education to get anywhere.