Nicki Minaj decided to demonstrate what being a true class act means after taking to Twitter a little after midnight on May 7 to give back to the community in the form of college student expenses.
How it all started
It was on Saturday night that the female rapper spent some time on Twitter talking to her fans about her plans to pay for the airfare of her international contest winners who were going to be spending some time with Nicki during the Billboard Music Awards taking place in Las Vegas.
During the conversation, a United States college student decided to chime in with a slightly more important question.
“Well you wanna pay for my tuition,” was the question that started at all. To this U.S. student’s surprise – and everyone else – Nicki replied. She told the student that if he could show her straight A’s that can be verified through the school – she’d pay.
To everyone’s surprise, the award-winning rapper didn’t stop there. Perhaps Nicki decided to see how many other college students were in need or maybe she was just in a giving mood. Either way, she asked who would want her to start a contest where she paid off College Expenses of those who verified straight A’s.
Chances are pretty good few were surprised by the response Nicki’s tweet received from her fans.
She put a spotlight on the troubling student loan situation
Through her charitable deed on social media, Nicki shinned a spotlight directly on the troubling student loan situation in the United States. Ben Miller, a director over postsecondary education for the American Progress Center, noted how dire of a situation the United States was in if college students had resorted to turning to social media with the hopes of someone rich and famous footing their bills.
The U.S. government has been pulling back the amount of funding they offer to public colleges over the last few years to help pay for student expenses.
To make things worse, the value of the Pell grant – which has always been exceptionally helpful to low-income college students – has also taken a nose dive. The combination of plummeting funding has made it difficult for college students all around the U.S. to afford expenses.
It is the dire situation that college students in the U.S. are in that resulted in Nicki Minaj receiving so many responses when she offered to pay the college expenses of some of her fans. The unfortunate truth is that so many American citizens opt not to go back to school simply because they can’t afford it.