preview

Problem With Debt

Decent Essays

1 - A Problem With Debt
As a High School senior, the inevitability of student loans always hung over my head, and yet among the sea of things that I could’ve done, scholarships never felt like an option. Scholarships exist to help students pay for a college education, something which has become indispensable for a “suitable” life nowadays. So then why do students willingly ignore the plethora of scholarships available to them? The answer is frustratingly simple: scholarships aren’t built around the student’s they’re supposed to target. Most scholarships require individualized essays in order to apply, let alone the extra essays and/or projects demanded by scholarships that provide larger sums. Even more so, these essays call for a certain …show more content…

The core concept behind ‘Design Thinking’ revolves around attaining a goal rather than simply fixing a problem at hand. Since focusing on an objective already helps address any unmet needs, goal-oriented solutions lay the groundwork for other improvements including future ‘Design Thinking’ solutions. As such, solutions of this nature need to be socially fluid, tangible in nature, and broadminded in approach. ‘Design Thinking’ solutions have the potential to change work habits and attitudes alike, so the accommodations made for users is vital to a solution’s success. How someone feels after experiencing change is an indispensable factor, especially when attempting to alter an individual’s perspective. In turn, these changes must be somewhat tangible so that users can more easily adjust by having something to follow and keep track of. Finally, solutions of this nature should always focus on the bigger picture in order to maintain direction, user freedom, and the solution’s ability to adapt. These three principles of operation, social fluidity, tangible nature, and broadminded approach, will facilitate the creation of an effective …show more content…

Our first solution tackles the problem from the academic side: a middleman service provided to high schools which links academic progress with third-party academic resources (such as scholarships). An online checklist linked to permanent records would be given to students. This checklist would help visualize a student’s chances of getting into University, and offer premade info-sheets that can be forwarded to any resource (including scholarships) linked through the service. Ultimately, this service would reduce financial stress on the student by decreasing some of the grunt work requested by scholarships and by providing other alternatives. At the same time, scholarships would gain access to more information about their applicants and be able make more informed

Get Access