Even at elite colleges, students go hungry

Parents Forum
21

If everyone has to pay for the full meal plan, some kids might not be able attend to the school at all. My kid’s freshman meal plan was almost $3000 per semester. The next year (still living in the dorm) the sophomore meal plan was $1700. Do sophomores eat less than freshmen? (No, it’s just that students would start living off campus if they had to pay that much for food) Now she lives off campus but has the $1700 meal plan provided to her through her scholarship. She doesn’t come close to using it all even with treating her friends to lunches and dinners almost every day (every entry into the dining hall takes $$ off her card). The meal plans are too expensive. If she could save $1000 or more per semester and afford to go to the school, shouldn’t she be able to do that?

Other daughter chose a 12 meal/wk plan and wasn’t even using all those her first few weeks of school (she then switched to a sorority meal plan). I’d be surprised to learn she’s eating 12 meals a week at the sorority. She doesn’t eat 12 meals a week when she’s at home. Not every kid eats breakfast, not all schedules allow the student to eat in the cafeteria every meal.

There was an article about a year or so ago about how students on 100% financial aid at the Ivies still struggle because they are away from home, need bus fare, need incidentals, and it’s often caused because they are sending what little extra they have home for other family members.

22

I had a full ride to my university, but the dorm did not serve anything on Sundays but a brunch, no dinner. In my four years in the dorm, I never ate after brunch on Sunday but did not consider it a big problem as it was only one meal. I know some kids went out for fast food in the PM, but I couldn’t. I thought most kids just didn’t eat on Sunday nights. My BF didn’t, so I thought it was normal. We were kinda hungry though. If classes or exams causesd me to miss a meal, it was missed, never replaced or supplemented. Come to think about it, the dorm did not serve breakfast either, just lunch and dinner Mon-Sat and brunch on Sunday, so those were the meals I ate. I didn’t miss breakfast much because I had a hot pot and tea and sometimes oatmeal packets. Wow, I just never thought about this, but now I’m remembering that I used to eat brunch on Sunday pretty close to closing time because I wouldn’t eat again until lunch on Monday. OMG. This thread is making me sad about something I thought was OK. It wasn’t.

23

Same Sunday brunch only at my school, and most of the sororities had the same thing. EVERYONE went out on Sunday nights. We had quite a few kids at my sorority who were townies, so you could always go home with someone for a dinner. My nephew attends the same school and his issue was Sunday mornings. He was starving by 11 am when the brunch started, so went out to breakfast.

24

D1’s fiance said he used go hungry sometimes because he used to spend money on booze rather on food. He was on very tight budget because his parents didn’t have too much to give him. He also never worked during school whereas D1 worked 10+ hrs a week.

My parents gave me very little money when I was in college. I used to work 20+ hrs/week for extra food money and incidentals.

25

My parents ran out of money after two years of me being in a private college (which back in the early 80’s was probably 5K a year). I transferred to a state school and worked almost full time to pay for school. I was very poor, but I didn’t go hungry because I worked at a restaurant. :slight_smile:

My son said he didn’t go hungry at MIT; whew!

26

DH and I talked about this last night after I read him the posts here. He says we were just typical “starving students,” nothing to be sad about. But I disagree, now anyway. I posted on the “Spending Freeze February” thread that the “food” bucket is our most challenging category to reign in. Cooking is our hobby, and we started it as soon as we landed real jobs out of college. I can remember how decadent it felt to go to the grocery store and go down each aisle, not just the one or two that had the three necessary items on our list. I can also remember grocery shopping with my parents as a kid and watching dad add up each list item on a small notepad as it went into the cart. Before we hit the checkout line, he usually had me or my brother take an item or two out of the basket to put back. I don’t recall being hungry growing up, but there was never any extra, and we were taught not to waste food. So yeah, food was a luxury in my young life, I just never thought of it that way until now. I certainly never thought to mention my food “shortage” in college to my parents.

I wonder if today’s college students who are in this same position consider being on the edge of hunger normal or, at least, not a problem like I did.

27

This news shouldn’t be that surprising. I think people have made sacrifices (including food) for education for centuries. Desire can be a powerful appetite suppressant.

28

I think that just about every school we have looked has mentioned a food pantry for kids who need help with food.

29

There are many different problems described, including scheduling issues, planning issues, distance to a store, and relative cost of a school. I don’t see why a student cannot walk to a store from Tufts: it’s 10 minutes. Emerson is expensive and my kids would never have considered it for that reason.

Instant oatmeal, a loaf of bread and peanut butter, a box of granola bars, are all helpful for those times when there is no meal provided at the school, or, for that matter, folks living off campus. Though with a stove there are options like rice and pasta. (Quinoa is expensive!)

My kids were on full financial aid but didn’t seem to go hungry. Among them they have type 1 diabetes, celiac and food allergies but they still had food on hand. They did say no to friends going out to eat, due to lack of funds, and they did work part-time and summers if they were able to.

30

Fine solutions if you have the money to buy them. Some just don’t. That’s the problem. I think it may be hard for some here to grasp, but some students don’t even have a coin lost in a pocket or hiding in a corner of a purse. I often didn’t have a single cent.

31

I think there is often a disconnect when talking about money and being “able to afford” stuff. When I was in college (and for some time right after graduating) I was often in the position of saying to friends, “I can’t afford to go to dinner with you, I have no money.” and when I said that it meant that I had no money in my wallet, no money in my bank account (well, ok less than $5 in checking), no money between the couch cushions, etc. When I said I had no money - that was exactly what I meant. I worked 20+ hrs a week throughout the school year (and 50+ hrs per week during the summers and breaks) and had not a single spare cent to put towards ‘extras’. I had the maximum loans available to students and I also had to cover my family EFC (4k additional a year in the early 90s).

I had/have friends who would say they had no money and what they meant was they didn’t want to pay for whatever outing or treat was being discussed. They still had plenty of money available to them in their bank account, and usually at least 50 bucks in their wallets.

It took me a long time to understand that ‘no money’ meant very different things to different people depending on their experience. I still remember crying my junior year when I came home late one Friday night from school, studying & work and found that my roommate had eaten my food because she “was too tired to go the grocery store and now it was past sundown which meant she couldn’t even use money until the following evening”. She wouldn’t reimburse me for the food she had eaten (because she couldn’t use money until the following night) and I had no other money because I had used it for the now gone food which meant I went hungry until the next morning when I could go to the dining hall. I had the smallest meal plan available and hadn’t planned on using points for breakfast because I thought I had enough food left in my kitchen for 3 more meals. There was enough food for 3 meals (for me), but my roommate had eaten all of it that night.

32

I wonder if that is because they made poor choices and were not managing their money well, or experienced what @beebee3 did. That is certainly not unusual, it has happened to just about everyone with a roommate. Sometimes it was the roommates guests who raided the fridge too. I was stuck with a roommate who didn’t pay their rent, so we had to cover it. Unfortunately some people have to learn the hard way.

33

Why is this subject so hard o fathom? Financial aid doesn’t confer extra income on a household that didn’t have very much in the first place. The money basically goes from one pocket of the donor school to its other pocket.

34

Or we were just poor. The summer I worked at college, rather than going home (which involved a parent driving 20+ hours to get me, then us driving 20+ hours back, sleeping in the car at rest areas and eating food packed from home), I had one meal a day that was rice and frozen vegetables and soy sauce, and two meals a day that were microwaved potatoes dipped in salt and pepper. A box of granola bars cost as much as 5 pounds of potatoes or rice.

I never went hungry when the dining halls were open, because everyone who lived on campus had a mandatory 3-meals-a-day meal plan. When the dining halls were closed for Thanksgiving or spring break, and there were no cooking facilities available, I ate less than I otherwise would have, to save money.

35

^^Exactly, @allyphoe A comprehensive meal plan is great while school is in session, but during the breaks, when students may have to stay on campus but have few options for meals, that’s when it becomes a problem. One of my daughter’s friends grew up desperately poor, had a full ride, and could not afford to go home for any break, except Christmas, when someone sponsored her trip. These are the kids who can easily go hungry.

36

Exactly. Empathy, folks. People DO run out of money. Is it a “poor choice” to pay the co-pay on your prescription instead of buying food? Is it a poor choice to pay the electric bill instead of buying food? Sometimes the money really does run out until the next pay check. If this is inconceivable to you, you are in an enviable position.

37

@TooOld4School - RE #31 -

I have volunteered for years at my local food pantry/soup kitchen, and our clients run the full gamut of folks down on their luck. There are definitely some who are not wise with their money - perhaps even a third of them. I would include among these people the ones who consistently make bad choices - gambling addicts, those who choose to buy cigarettes instead of food, etc. But most of the people who come for help are not “regular” clients - though we do get busier the last week of the month as the food stamps run out. We are also busier in the colder months when families have had to pay for heat - there just isn’t enough money to cover everything.

When it comes to food insecure kids in college, even the elite colleges, I am sure there are some who blow all their money on “wine, women and song”, aka “sex drugs and rock n roll” . But these are not the majority. The elite colleges have made great strides in reaching out to disadvantaged families in the past decade or so, and giving them an opportunity that will change their lives. And while their lives have begun to change once they have gotten accepted with a full ride, most of these kids have families who rely on the part time income they would have earned had they not gone away to school. The family ties are tight, and these kids have been raised by families who have sacrificed so much for them - it is completely understandable for them to want to help those back home. If that means sending the $100 they earned in their part time job home, so the family is not evicted, they won’t hesitate.

Another recurring issue for many of these food insecure at elite schools is that even though the school provides a full ride, often not requiring loans, many of these kids will take loans anyway - to help their family out. Whether this is wise or not doesn’t matter, it happens a lot.

The elite colleges want to help their less fortunate students, but what they haven’t done a great job doing is an understanding of why these kids want to help their families. Often, these are smart kids - else they wouldn’t get into these schools. They will feel guilty when they are eating 2-3 meals a day when the family at home struggles so much to get even one, and they will do what they can to help.

Also, when the school allows these students to take the cash equivalent of a meal plan that covers 11-12 meals a week, these students will use the money in a hearbeat instead. The culture shock of coming to a school with a cafeteria meal plan is real - eating in a cafeteria is like eating out at a restaurant. One meal for one person there costs more than what the student’s family spent for the whole family all day. For kids who grew up like this, how are they to justify spending that much on food, when there are so many other family needs.

Some of the elite schools have set up stopgap solutions, which help in part, but because they don’t address the root causes of the problem, the problems will continue…

38

It’s not unusual for educated people with regular jobs to be in denial about the widespread abject poverty in the U.S.

39

It’s not just food some students go without. Sometimes they’re homeless, too.

This award-winning article was published in the campus newspaper at our flagship state university while my son was a student there. It’s quite a few years old, but the situation still exists, and not just at the University of Maryland.

http://www.hearstawards.org/competitions/writing/2006-07/third-place-writing-features/

40

MITs cheapest meal plan is only 10 meals per week, if that’s all you’re eating, you’re still hungry.

Kids also spend their money on Starbucks and ordering Pizza instead of more practical groceries.