Students at Cornell University can use an app to pay their peers to drop out of certain classes to obtain an open seat themselves

See Pollinate: The Academic Advocacy Service That Has Cornell Abuzz by Mary Sotiryadis of The Cornell Daily Sun. 

This seems a little bit like ticket scalping. You buy a concert ticket (maybe after waiting in line at a ticket office in the old days). Then you re-sell it to someone else for a higher price. This might mean that they are paying your for your time. If their time is more valuable than yours, this could actually be an efficient way to do things. If the price Cornell charged for each class were higher, then this would not happen.

Excerpts from the article:

"In the weeks before the fall 2022 semester, social media was abuzz with rumors of a new online service called Pollinate that allows students to pay their peers to drop out of certain classes to obtain an open seat themselves — now Pollinate has landed at Cornell. Students took to Sidechat and Reddit with complaints of classism and elitism.

Despite Pollinate’s increasing presence on campus, it was actually founded at the University of Chicago by two seniors, Jon Merril and Jack Ogle, studying economics. 

“We focused on Cornell because we had friends who go to Cornell, and we heard that [enrollment in specific courses] was a problem there as well,” Merril said.

"Some students raise a concern that the software is perpetuating elitism by allowing financially privileged students to buy seats from disadvantaged students. 

Muna Mohamed ’24 said that she would never use Pollinate because the prices are too high and she is worried about how it affects her own ability to get into the classes she needs to graduate.

“No student is going to drop a class without some monetary incentive, so the advocacy thing is basically null,” Mohamed said. “This just encourages students to take up spaces in classes and keep them until they can get paid for it, even if they don’t need it. This does nothing but make class registration harder than it already is.”"

Related post:

Want to make $60 an hour? Stand in line for a lobbyist, while its still legal (2007)

Here is that short post:

Lobbyists in Washington are very busy and their time is valuable. So they don't want to wait in line to get a good seat at a Congressional hearing. So they pay people to stand in line for them. Companies exist to find waiters and the internet is used. You can make up to $60 an hour. Seems okay to me. Lobbyists can use their time wisely and low income people can earn alot. But a senator wants to outlaw the practice. It was in today's San Antonio Express-News. The article is
Waiting for dollars won't hurt America and was by Maria Anglin (unfortunately, the article by Ms. Anglin is no longer online).