I am a student in Professor Arvan's Econ 490 class, writing under an alias to protect my privacy, using the name of a famous economist Elinor Ostrom as part of my alias.
As students, there are always someone who can not choose their favorite courses due to low Internet speed at the beginning of each semester; who are always snatched seats by outrageous people; students majoring economy can not find appropriate time for reserving tutors; who can not choose their favorite lawyers when dealing with tickets in legal office; who can only wait in line for long for billiards tables in union; who must order small office rooms through long term reservation in advance. As students, we are often forced into waiting list, and how can we solve this kind of problems? The answer is IlliniBucks, with which, we can free from waiting in line and find the resources we want rapidly, thus saving time.
I think the issuance of IlliniBucks must be limited. If the sales are unlimited, it will lose its practical effects under the circumstance of everyone owning IlliniBucks. And as the issuer of IlliniBucks, the school should issue equal amount of IlliniBucks to all students each year or each semester and the sales between students among be better prohibited. In general, students with better school achievements are encouraged in the old system of the school, where student who perform well in study can have the tight to select courses in priority, which I think is healthy. But if the sales of IlliniBucks by money are promoted in school, IlliniBucks will be the priority for wealthy students, leading to the transfer from study encouragement to wealthy encouragement, which is unhealthy measure. At the meantime, I think graduates should own the highest level of priority for selecting courses, which is even higher than the selection through IlliniBucks, for that only in this way, can graduates be guaranteed to select the courses they want most, avoiding the delay of graduation of graduates due to their failure in selecting courses.
The IlliniBucks is better to be reserved in i-card, with a certain amount each semester, which will be reset automatically in next semester with another time of issuance of certain amount. This measure can make students check the amount of IlliniBucks at the end of each semester and finish using all IlliniBucks before finishing of each semester. As a result, people will feel it is a waster to leave IlliniBucks so as to encourage the using of IlliniBucks. At the meantime, IllniBucks can also be used as a kind of care for vulnerable groups and award for students with extraordinary contributions, such as disabled students and core students in Basketball team.
It is inevitable for some problems arising as to IlliniBucks system, such as which one should be in priority of two who are both using IlliniBucks for selecting courses; the problem of comparison like auction arising in ordering courts by two people with IlliniBucks; someone will be forced to help seniors to occupy positions with IlliniBucks (there is the rule of obeying elders among Asian students) and so on.
It seems you don't want the Illinibucks to be transferable. Why not? If there were a black market for Illinibucks, wouldn't the sellers benefit as much as the buyers?
ReplyDeleteOne of the things you didn't comment about at all is the price in Illinibucks for getting priority. How would that be set? Are there certain things on campus that most students would want priority for, so its Illinibucks price would be high? What might those things be?