That’s one creative way to pay for your college tuition.

Linda Matchan of the Boston Globe via WCVB.

Woman uses ‘GoFundMe’ site to pay for Harvard education

Tonika Morgan has not had an easy life. Now 32, the Toronto woman says she left home at 14, was homeless for four years, and slept in shelters and on park benches. She was kicked out of high school, she says, because she hardly ever showed up.

Even though she’s overcome problems that would overwhelm almost anyone, it wasn’t until this year that she faced what she calls her “biggest fear of all”: the fear that her application to attend Harvard’s Graduate School of Education next fall would be rejected.

It wasn’t. She’s in. But with her acceptance letter came another big worry: that she couldn’t pay the approximately $77,000 needed for the one-year master’s program, where tuition alone is $43,280.

So, lacking resources or workable options, she joined a growing number of needy college students and turned to crowdfunding to raise the money. She launched a “Mission for Harvard Tuition” a month ago on the GoFundMe site.

She hasn’t quite reached her goal, yet it’s already one of the site’s most successful education campaigns, according to GoFundMe spokeswoman Kelsea Little. And there have been many campaigns: The popularity of the site’s education category has skyrocketed since its launch in 2010, Little said, jumping from 2,298 campaigns in 2011 to 194,869 in 2014.

Morgan’s cause was embraced by the citizens of Toronto after local media publicized her plight last week. Some 1,300 people have contributed nearly $73,000 so far ($88,570 in Canadian dollars), and Morgan has gone from slipping between the cracks to being a local celebrity.