If you happen to live in Canada, you can take a year off to travel the world before college and use those frequent flyer miles to pay your tuition.
Thanks to a team effort by Air Canada’s frequent flyer program, Aeroplan, and HigherEdPoints, miles can now be converted into education dollars.
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Users can cash in 35,000 miles for a $250 certificate accepted by 70 colleges and universities in Canada.
The money can go toward tuition, fees or even paying down student loan debt.
Recent college graduate Charles Bernatchez swapped 210,000 frequent flyer miles he collected from friends and family to pay off $1,500 in student loan debt.
“I have a crap ton of debt that I have to pay off,” Bernatchez told Bloomberg Business. He gets some help from the 150,000 miles a year he runs up by using a credit card offering mileage points.
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The program has been slow to take off, with only about $125,000 in certificates issued since the program started in 2013, but HigherEdPoints hopes to expand into the U.S. soon.
(READ more at Bloomberg) — Photo: Brian, CC; Theivorytower, GNU