It’s no secret that a college education is expensive. Many current students and and grads are forced to piece together tuition with some combination of family savings, loans, and scholarships. But when Emily Stutz, a high school senior, sat down to figure out how she would pay for college, she came up short — so, she decided to crowdsource her tuition money.
According to her GoFundMe page, even attending a state school would require tuition funds that Stutz simply couldn't come up with. While her parents both work (making a combined $140,000, according to The Boston Globe), they are both still paying off their own student debt and are unable to assist her or cosign a loan. Small amounts of merit-based aid from private schools weren't enough, and state school tuition, which Stutz says starts around $20,000, would far exceed her $1,000 savings from babysitting and odd jobs.
“She’s a good kid; she’s a victim of my bad finances,” her father told the Globe. Through her campaign, Stutz has raised over $24,000 of her $30,000 goal, through mostly small donations from strangers as well as family members. The straight-A student also panhandled near a local shopping mall, raising another $600.
The funds she's raised are enough to cover close to two years of tuition at her chosen school, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, but Stutz notes that her campaign is about more that just her. In an update on her page, she wrote “[M]y main motive was to promote the awareness of the skyrocketing costs of college and the huge financial burden placed on students and families.”
Stutz also added that when she is established as a psychiatrist, she hopes to create a scholarship for the total amount raised via her campaign.
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