A University of Michigan student set to graduate this May has come up with a creative way to start paying off his college loans: selling ad space on his graduation cap, USA TODAY reported.
Though Alex Benda, 22, is excited to embark on the next chapter of his life, he's worried about his $30,000 in student debt he needs to pay back.
"It's scary to think I'm about to go out into this economy and try to find a job and have all this debt I'll have to start paying," Benda said. "I started thinking, 'Do I have anything available I could sell?'"
While the actual cap is not that large, Benda discovered that if he could sell 100 squares -- each 1-inch by 1-inch -- for $300 each, he could be finished paying his loans by graduation.
Benda, and international business major, said the response to his ad space has been positive so far, bringing in $1,200 on a crowd-sourcing website he created.
"I aspire to be an entrepreneur and love out of the box thinking to solve everyday problems," he wrote on his website. "I realized that I would have the eyes of every graduating student and their family's on me as I walked across the stage to accept my diploma."
However, he added that he won't be selling space to offensive advertisements.
"There's a button in the middle, so I don't know how that will work with that square, but we'll make it work if someone buys it," Benda said. "If you want to buy four of them and put a little figurine up there on my hat, I'm fine with that."
Benda is the youngest of six children -- one of whom passed away -- and the only sibling to not join the military in order to pay for school.
"That was never me," he said. "No one in my family has had the true college experience. I wanted to try it."
Though he accepted part-time jobs, like working as a photographer for weddings and senior portraits, he couldn't dedicate enough time to work while being able to attend class at the same time.
"I couldn't make enough to pay my college without working so many hours that I couldn't go to college full time," he said.
