Home Free!

How would you like to live rent-free (or close to it) while going to school?

House-sitting, especially during summer months when many professors take extended vacations, is one free housing alternative. In exchange for supervision duties, many dorms offer room and board to resident assistants. Being a live-in babysitter or housekeeper are other possibilities.

For the more imaginative home-seeker, those aren't the only ways to be happily (and cheaply) housed. A funeral home in Evanston, Illinois, provides a student with living quarters in exchange for answering the telephone at night and occasionally acting as the home's representative at wakes.

If living with the dead isn't your idea of fun in the sun, consider Bill Schultz, an electrical engineering student at the University of Tennessee. For a reduced rate, he lives in UT's experimental solar house, watching dials and conducting tours three days a week.

And for those who like it really hot, there's the Ithaca Volunteer Fire Department. More than 20 Ithaca College and Cornell University males receive free housing in the firehouse in return for battling blazes, says Deputy Chief Ken Reeves. "The fire chief who just retired stayed here when he was going to school."