DailyDirt: Tuition Debt Is For Chumps?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Crowds of students are graduating (or have just graduated) from college, and they might be a little nervous about how they're going to pay off their student loans. Student debt can be difficult to pay off, so some folks are trying to avoid it completely in a few novel ways. Here are a bunch of examples of students getting financially creative with their tuition bills.

• In 2011, Richard Linder got a college degree from Excelsior College for about $3,000 -- without attending any classes in person. Excelsior doesn't require graduating students to have taken any of its own courses, so Linder transferred credits (many of them free) from a variety of online classes. [url]
• Ken Ilgunas went to grad school at Duke and lived frugally in his van because he didn't want to get into debt again after paying off his undergrad loans. Ilgunas showered in the school's gym facilities, bummed electricity and internet from the libraries, and wrote a book (Walden on Wheels) about his lifestyle. [url]
• Jonathan Hood paid for his graduate education at Auburn University with a TON of mail-in rebate offers. Buying stuff, redeeming the rebates and then eBaying the stuff... it takes a lot of time, but he wrote some automation software to help him keep track of all of it (and he'll likely be able to sell that someday, too). [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: degree, graduate school, jonathan hood, ken ilgunas, rebates, richard linder, student debt, student loans, tuition
Companies: duke, ebay, excelsior college