The idea of Illinibucks sounds appealing at first thought. The idea that one could "buy" their way into getting whatever they want. This sounds a lot like the way capitalism works, where if you have enough money, you can get whatever you want. The use of Illinibucks could be for class registration priority, skipping to the front of the textbook line (which is notoriously long during the first few weeks of school), or for skipping to the front of the line at campus restaurants. The use of this "currency" should be for something that is an inconvenience to students and that they would be willing to pay money to overcome.
The strategic spending of this money is something students will have to consider. Do they allocate their Illinibucks so that they can use a little for multiple wants or do they pour all of their money into one particular thing they really want. It all depends on the elasticity of demand for the services that the Illinibucks can buy. I would imagine that getting priority class registration would be in extremely high demand as that is a major problem at U of I. At least from my experience, getting into the classes I want is a painful process.
The issues that would arise from pricing vary based on if the Illinibucks are over priced or under priced. If they are priced too high, only wealthier students would be able to buy them. This creates an income discrimination that could cause the University a lot of trouble. If they are priced too low, everyone would be able to buy as many as they want and the Illinibucks would become useless.
Another issue I see forming is that of a black market for Illinibucks. If they become scarce because of restrictions to the number sold, students who have the bucks could sell them for much more than the market value. This black market could be dangerous to the purpose of the bucks and would create fierce competition.
Overall, I think there are more problems with this idea than there are benefits. Too much would need to be worked out for this to work correctly. There aren't problems on campus that are that bad that they warrant this kind of program.
If I understand how things works now for registration, those with early registration get priority in all the classes they want to sign up for. Wouldn't an alternative where students can use their prior in one or two classes only be fairer? Also, if there were such a system then a student might be "bought out" of a class in which they are currently enrolled, in exchange for a sufficient number of Illinibucks to make this trade seem worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteThere are still some classes that even if you have an earlier registration date, you cannot get into because of major restrictions. If the Illinibucks could be used to overcome these restrictions, than there could be a problem of fairness due to unequal incomes.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me like IlliniBucks would simply serve as another means to demonstrate the value of a certain good, be that placement in a particular class or the ability to jump places in a checkout line. In the real world we use money to show how much we value a commodity by choosing to spend it on some things and not others. I wonder if IlliniBucks would actually make things like course registration more efficient as far as getting more students into more of the classes that are most important to them. I do agree that it would create many problems though, such as inequalities among different income-level students and the possibility of a black market like the post mentioned.
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