WSU student on tuition quest

Kaia Rongstad remembers her first view of the Palouse as a sharp contrast to her hometown of Juneau, Alaska.

“I was kind of freaking out on the plane, because all I could see was wheat fields everywhere,” the Washington State University freshman said. “But from the second I stepped off the plane, I just kept meeting friendly people.”

Less than a year later, she doesn’t want to leave, but a combination of circumstances has made it difficult to pay her out-of-state tuition. So she’s turned to the good people of eBay.

“I’m hoping someone will find it in their heart to help a struggling college student,” she wrote in a new post at the online auction site. “If you choose to help me you’ll receive a lifetime of gratitude and appreciation.”

Rongstad is asking people to donate to her education. Her annual out-of-state tuition of roughly $17,000, along with living expenses, exceeds the federal loan limit by thousands of dollars. Her family doesn’t qualify for grants, though her mom can’t afford to help her with tuition, she said.

“If you’re rich, you don’t need (grants), and if you’re poor, you qualify,” she said. “If you’re in the middle, you’re screwed.”

She says she can’t attend college in Alaska because the schools there don’t offer her intended major, landscape architecture. During her first semester she worked 40 hours a week, and her grades suffered, she said. This semester, she hasn’t worked, and she’s nearly out of money.

“I don’t know how I’m going to be able to continue,” she said.

Rongstad’s posting on eBay falls in a recent trend of college students coming up with creative ways to ask for tuition money. About 20 years ago, an Illinois college student raised tuition by asking every reader of a newspaper column to donate a penny. In recent years, several students or former students have set up Web sites seeking donations.

It’s a more purpose-driven variation on what’s become known as cyberbegging or e-panhandling – sites that solicit donations for a range of purposes, from credit-card debt to breast implants.

Rongstad said she plans to work two jobs during the summer, and she’ll fall short of the money she needs to keep attending WSU next year.

She said her parents saved for her college, but the savings were wiped out when her father became ill and died about four years ago. He had a business as an audiologist, and Rongstad’s mother has struggled to keep the business afloat, she said.

Rongstad said she doesn’t know where she got the idea to post an appeal for help at eBay. She posted the item Wednesday night and hadn’t received any donations as of Thursday afternoon.

She’s not sure what she’ll do if she raises more money than she needs, or how she’ll satisfy donors that the money is going for school expenses. But she said if people want receipts or confirmation of how she spends the donations she’ll provide it.

“I figure, what do I have to lose?” Rongstad said. “I’m just trying to get any amount of money that could help me continue studying.”