<p>I don’t think I’m “confusing” anything. Many smaller colleges now contract out all food services to an outside vendor, for a price negotiated between the vendor and the school. The school sets the meal plan rates to cover the amount it has contracted to pay the vendor, who is obviously in it for a profit; students pay the school, not the vendor. But that negotiated price reflects both an expected number of skipped meals and an expected number of larger-than-average eaters.</p>
<p>Many larger universities still run their own in-house food service operations. And many now operate hybrid systems with a combination of in-house dining halls and contracts with a variety of vendors, often with hybrid or “flex” meal plans providing a specified number of dining hall meals and a certain number of pre-paid dollars good at on-campus vendors, sometimes with the capacity to convert meals to dollars and vice versa. </p>
<p>It’s complicated, but bottom line, I don’t know of any college or university that operates its dining services to generate a profit for the college or university. Obviously, outside vendors are in it for profit, but what they charge, and what they supply, is typically negotiated with the college or university.</p>
<p>Do many of the “Ivy League and Elite Liberal arts” schools actually admit significant numbers of transfer students from community colleges? It looks like you are looking for an idealized option that rarely or never exists.</p>
<p>It is also not the students admitted to those schools that are likely to choose to start at community college to save money. Most of the students going to those schools come from wealthy families, and those particular schools themselves are wealthy enough to have generous financial aid offerings.</p>
<p>For the students choosing community college instead of 4-year schools, the likely choice is to start at community college or not go to college at all.</p>
<p>“I just prefer the kids I know that have used community college as a money saving stepping stone to the Ivy League and Elite Liberal arts than I do to the kids who spend three years at a community college then go to the local university and simply complete their classes.”</p>
<p>How is it that you know enough CC students who were successful in transferring from a community college to an Ivy or Elite institution, and simultaneously know enough students who followed the 3 years at CC then local U route so that you are able to form this clear an opinion of their personalities and characters? Do you work in the transfer office at a CC?</p>
<p>Really? Someone has to ask this question? A college/university is a NOT-FOR-PROFIT institution. They do not “profit” off anything. The money must be put back into the university.</p>
<p>A part of the university may be profitable and used to subsidize other parts of the university. For example, the football team may be profitable, and the money raised subsidizes other sports which cost money. The donation receiving office may be profitable, so that it gives the donated money to other parts of the university.</p>
<p>While technically true, this statement is a bit misleading. Colleges and universities do engage in profit-making activities, i.e., activities for which revenues exceed the costs, generating a surplus. They may not be so crass as to call that surplus a “profit,” but that’s what it is. For example, many business schools operate high-priced executive MBA programs that bring in substantially more money than they cost. That surplus goes to support other operations of the business school (though at some universities a portion may be siphoned off to support the central budget). Another example is intellectual property licensing fees. Many universities own valuable patents. The University of Minnesota, for example, holds patents on numerous popular varieties of apples, including Honeycrisp, SweeTango, and Zestar, among others, developed by university plant scientists. Anyone who grows these varieties of apples must pay a licensing fee to the University. Once the patent is acquired, it costs virtually nothing to maintain, and the licensing arrangements are an extremely lucrative source of revenue for the University–a “profit center,” if you will, though the profits from this lucrative business are poured directly into the University’s coffers, and the University as a whole operates as a non-profit, with annual revenues from all sources roughly matching expenditures across all categories. Within that overall framework, though, a lot of money moves around from high-revenue/low-expenditure activities (like patent licensing) to low-revenue/high-expenditure activities (like undergraduate education).</p>
<p>Given that context, it’s not so silly to ask whether colleges and universities make a “profit” on dining services, which is just a way of asking if their revenues exceed the costs of providing such services. To which the answer is, generally, no. But it’s not because they’re legally barred from generating a surplus (“profit”) from that particular service; it’s because the students and their bill-paying parents would mutiny if they ever discovered that they were being charged a price for the meal plan that exceeded the cost of the goods and services they were receiving.</p>
<p>bclintonk - the schools that contract out do not assume the risk in their financial projections and modeling. You are right in that the school is paid then they pay the vendor but the school takes a margin on their projected rates which results in a markup to the student. The vendor (traditionally) is only paid for the students that ‘scan’ to get a meal (though other models are sometimes used). The vendor is a specialist on meal providing and projections. They are the ones that have the expertise and thus assume the risk. The schools are not specialist in food services or financial projections on burn rates for various meals which is the exact reason they outsource. Yes, schools use their food services as a revenue stream for the school. You would never enter into a contract with the students to provide a service that you are dependent on a contract with another party being executed to meet. As a result, they build in financial cushions that if all goes well help the school’s bottom line and if their is an issue with the vendor they have the money to quickly remedy it.</p>
<p>UCBAlumus - I have known of students who wouldn’t have applied to Ivy league or other elite schools out of high school because they did not feel qualified that went on to these schools after transfer. Yes, Cornell is the most common and the school that is the most welcoming to transfers while Princeton has a blanket no transfer policy. Additionally, often times, as you have heard on these boards, assets held by an individual are not always personal assets and as a result some times, due to businesses and other issues, the year a kid graduates is the worst year to apply for aid. There are a wide range of issues and I have often found that engineering school offer the best transfer options since they are better prepared to judge if a student is qualified to enter into the rigors or the math and science programs while high school classes, even with an AP exam, can still be hit or miss.</p>
<p>Informative - There are publicly traded colleges that are for-profit and it isn’t something new. Two of the oldest, still operating, were founded in the 1850s and educated the likes of Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and John D Rockefeller. Though you may see elite schools are not for profits they are most certainly positive cash flow ventures that have profit margins they want generated. (The only want to ensure the school has enough money to give you, and your fellow administrators a raise is to ensure that you are turning profits with large cash reserves–outside of the endowment).</p>
<p>No, unfortunately. The U.S. patent on the Honeycrisp expired in 2008, so U.S. growers no longer need to pay a licensing fee to the University of Minnesota if they’re growing Honeycrisp for sale in the U.S. Patents in Canada, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Chile, and South Africa are still valid, however. We see quite a few Chilean and New Zealand apples here in the winter and spring, when it’s apple season in the southern hemisphere; any Honeycrisps you buy then probably turn a little profit for the Gophers.</p>
<p>Some other varieties–Zestar, SnowSweet, and SweeTango–are still under patent and/or the names are registered trademarks owned by the University. None are presently as popular as the Honeycrisp, however. If you like Honeycrisp, you might like the SweeTango, a cross between the Honeycrisp and Zestar varieties; same crunch, juicyness, and flavor explosion as a Honeycrisp but a slightly different blend of sweet and tart.</p>
<p>Talking about licensing and revenue generating endeavors, the envy of the academic world is Harvard University Press. The school makes a killing off their publishing and by having their name on the works of so many difference academic researchers work, from so many other schools, it drastically helps their brand all over the world.</p>