The International Student Blog

No one likes debt, especially student debt, and these days more and more students are graduating with it. To make matters worse, jobs have become scarce these last few years. The combination of these two things has inspired a student organization known as FixUC to look for creative new ways to restructure how students pay for college, hoping to alleviate some of the student debt while at the same time providing enough revenue for the schools.

Currently, if you want to go to college you have to pay for your classes you attend at the beginning of each semester. If you don’t have the money, then you can take out an international student loan which you will have to begin paying off after you graduate. Those loans have to be paid no matter what, so before applying for a loan be sure to plan ahead!

FixUC, a group put together by students from UC Riverside, has proposed a novel way to make tuition, in their opinion, more fair. Rather than paying for school with student loans, students could opt to pay for their classes by giving 5% of their wages back to the college for the first 20 years after they graduate. This would effectively make rich graduates subsidize part of the tuition of less well off graduates. FixUC sees this as a good thing, as it does not place undue burden on students who do not find a well paying job after graduation.

There are problems with this method too. The Economist points out that some majors may suffer more than others. For example, students who graduate with a career in psychology are likely to make less money than those who have careers in economics. This means that some departments may suffer or be unable to sustain themselves if FixUC had its way. Another problem is that it is an open question whether or not this system would generate enough revenue to run a college at all.

Despite the potential drawbacks, new ideas like this are always welcome. Student debt is a real problem for many graduates, and it is good to know students are actively trying to find fair alternatives to the current methods in place.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2012 at 5:00 am and is filed under International Student, International Student Study Section, Study in the USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Written by Jenny Frankel

Jennifer is the Director of Financial Services at Envisage International. Jennifer is a graduate of the University of Florida where she holds a Masters in International Business and a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration. She has lived and worked abroad in Chile, Costa Rica and London, and traveled extensively in South America, Europe and Asia.

Other posts by Jenny Frankel