Michigan student selling ad space on graduation cap

FLINT, Mich., Jan. 20 (UPI) -- A University of Michigan-Flint student said he is hoping to make some money toward paying off his student loans by selling ad space on his graduation cap.

Alex Benda, 22, an international business major, said he split the top of his 10-inch by 10-inch graduation cap into 100 tiny squares, and he is hoping to sell each square for $300 to completely pay off his $30,000 student loan debt, the Detroit Free Press reported Monday.

"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?'"

Benda said he has already sold $1,200 worth of ad space on crowd-sourcing website gogetfunding.com.

"I aspire to be an entrepreneur and love out of the box thinking to solve everyday problems," he wrote on the site. "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."

Benda said his only rule for the ads is to avoid crude and offensive material.

"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," he said. "If you want to buy four of them and put a little figurine up there on my hat, I'm fine with it."