More than 130K students have turned to GoFundMe, seeking crowdfunding to help pay their tuition costs, CNBC reports in the short video embedded below. More than $20M dollars has been raised this year.
With the average cost of tuition and fees for private institutions exceeding $31K, students are turning to crowdfunding for solutions. The Chronicle of Higher Education released new numbers on the cost of colleges across US during the 2014-2015 academic year, with Sarah Lawrence topping the list at $65,480 for tuition, room and board, and fees; Harvey Mudd College coming in a close second with $64,427 and Columbia University taking third with $63,440. That’s a lot of clams. According to Bloomberg, since 1978, college tuition has increased by 1,225%.
Looking over the international GoFundMe campaigns, some seek donations in the $1,000 range while others such as the College Fund for Ms Errickson’s son seek to raise $75K, of which 61,266 has been secured. The student loan debt exceeds $1 Trillion. More and more students are relying on the crowd to end their academic endeavors. Case study research is currently underway by the Council for Support and Advancement of Education regarding the effects of crowdfunding to help understand current crowdfunding trends in higher education.
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