<p>"Some students and their parents take on more federally subsidized debt than they need to live better than they need to. When they default, the taxpayer loses. In general, excessive spending on student amenities both raises college prices and encourages people who are not intellectually inclined to attend college. "</p>
<p>AGAIN - The facility with all the amenities is CHEAPER than on campus living. It is off campus and does not have anything to do with tuition prices.</p>
<p>A very basic dorm room at my D’s school is $1900/semester - that’s WITHOUT the meal plan. For the same cost, my D can have a place OFF CAMPUS with her own private bedroom and bath and climate control, kitchen, washer and dryer shared with 2 other people.</p>
<p>A set up with that kind of luxury ON CAMPUS is $4500/semester. WHY? Why the cost difference? </p>
<p>So students who choose to live in these “luxury apartments” off campus are actually SAVING money.</p>
<p>The connection between defaults and luxury dorms is tenuous at best. Most of the better schools that also can attract students who can afford luxury dorms have very low default rates (under 5%). And I doubt the few defaulters they do have ever lived in luxury housing. Most probably had other more important problems.</p>
<p>A lot of buildings are just-old-enough that it’s not worth tearing them down, but trying to keep them nice / clean / energy-efficient is a tall order, too. Just think how much it must ahve cost to retrofit some older buildings / dorms to get wireless and/ or good cellular service when the materials that the buildings were built from make that difficult.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, how many years do you figure it took to recoup the cost of getting wireless in a given building? D couldn’t get good cell signal in her room, she had to step outside. Texts would go through, but not phone calls.</p>
<p>I get that maintaining a building to be “nice” is expensive - but what I’m saying is that comparitively the cost for what you wind up getting is just outrageous.</p>
<p>Since my daughter shared housing with friends after college & since her city is less expensive to live in than ours, she actually had a similar standard of living to college and higher than our own.</p>
<p>She had at least one or two roommates however in order to be able to afford that.
If you are moving to a more expensive town in order to find work, your standard of living would decrease without roommates in many cases.</p>
<p>Dorms are a huge profit center for many if not most colleges.</p>
<p>My alma mater recently started requiring that students live on campus for both freshman and sophomore years. The reason is simple - kids were moving off campus as soon as possible because they could live for half the amount or less, and have a much nicer place to boot.</p>
<p>The dorm I lived in when I was there is a cinder block building built in the 50’s with floor bathrooms and one poor kitchen for the entire building. Your half of the 200 sq ft double room costs well in excess of $7000 per year - and these are the cheapest dorms available.</p>
<p>And if you live on campus, you are much more likely to be on a meal plan since the cooking facilities are so limited - another $5000+ per year. Cha-ching.</p>
<p>Is it any wonder the school wants to keep kids in the dorms? They have/can require a captive audience, and they abuse it.</p>
<p>And with that kind of money on the line, it is easy to provide something “luxurious” in comparison for the same or less money.</p>
<p>BTW, big screen TVs are no longer a sign of luxury, you can get 50"-ers for less than $500. I paid more than that for my first 20" TV 30 years ago.</p>
<p>And the meal plans are similarly a profit center for colleges. Certainly the food today is generally superior to the cafeteria food of old, but a much of the menu at colleges (from the menus I’ve read) is just cheap carbos (think nachos, pizza, fries, chili), burgers and chicken cooked in 100 simple ways. That kind of “cuisine” and the invariably low salaries paid to kitchen workers by Sodexo and the like, allow the schools to provide the all-you-can eat dinning, an still make a pretty good buck. Some colleges require even commuters to buy into meal plans if their schedule is at least 10 credits per semester.</p>
<p>I like these off-campus setups much more than I like colleges that have different levels of price and quality for on-campus housing. My kids’ college has very nice dorms–and they all cost the same.</p>
<p>Senior Yr D lived in college owned townhouses, with a friend. She still had the smallest board option and her friend wasnt on board, which gave them flexibility cause they could share board points, but then also cook at home.
The food is so good compared to some schools.
Just one cafeteria, but they have stations of pizza/ grill to order/ sandwiches to order/ soups & salads and hot food.
I love their dal & their breakfasts. ( Pizza is hit or miss- I am very picky re: pizza) It also overlooks the wooded canyon & the amphitheatre, making it feel peaceful.</p>
<p>“I like these off-campus setups much more than I like colleges that have different levels of price and quality for on-campus housing. My kids’ college has very nice dorms–and they all cost the same.”</p>
<p>We visited several campuses like that. We thought the dorm set-ups were really nice. It may not be feasible for LARGE campuses with older facilities to pull that off though.</p>
<p>The meal plan at D2’s school is mostly just convenient. The cafeteria food is just that - cafeteria food. The most popular stop, I think, are the cereal and ice cream bins. There’s a lot of fast food/junk food on campus which is convenient, but not necessarily good fuel. I know she’s looking forward to meal sharing with her off campus apartment-mates and some of the guys that will be living in on campus apartments. They’re going to trade off nights of cooking.</p>
How did the cost compare to off-campus housing?</p>
<p>What sucks is that in areas where there isn’t an abundance of off-campus housing, the ridiculous prices the school charges has the effect of driving up off-campus rates as well, because the dorms establish a baseline.</p>
<p>Notrichenough - It was similar at the particular campus we were looking at.</p>
<p>It was a commuter college in a small, sort of industrial town - which is one of the reasons D marked it off her list.</p>
<p>The dorms were nice, 2 room suite style with a “kitchen” area - small full-size refrigerator/freezer and a microwave, kitchen sink and a few cabinets. Each suite also had a living room/seating area. Each bedroom had a bed, night stand, chest of drawers, desk and chair, and a closet. Suitemates shared a bathroom with an actual bathtub/shower. There is a community swimming pool in the center of all the dorms. It is very apartment style with a club-house, etc. VERY NICE. They are $2550/semester (not including meals) To lease one year round would be $6198, so $516.60/person. A 1024 sq. ft. apartment 2 bdr/2 bath nearbly with similar amenities, but of course the extra bath per unit, a full kitchen and the added independence would equal out to be about $525/mo./person. </p>
<p>Of course there are not individual leases at the apartment complex, and utilities are not included there…so the dorm in this case is not so bad. Especially since it IS a commuter campus and there’s NOTHING right next to the campus, including apartments…you’d probably have to drive.</p>
The apartment complex DD is in next year has individual leases, utilities are included (including cable and internet), she gets her own bedroom with a private bath, there is a living room and full kitchen, and a pool, basketball court, and beach volleyball court, and there is a free shuttle bus to campus which is about 1.5 miles away.</p>
<p>The total cost of this is about the same for 12 months as her 2 person dorm room with a shared bath, no kitchen and shared lounge for the floor is for 8 months.</p>
<p>Yes, the situation you describe is much like I see around most other college towns and campuses.</p>
<p>I think that this particular campus was really trying to encourage students to live on campus. I have to say, they made it very attractive. I guess my question is, if they can do it, why can’t others?</p>
<p>The answer, I think is, “They can, they just don’t want to. Why should they, when they can squeeze more money out of you by requiring you live on campus and charging through the nose for a tiny little room and a shared bath.”</p>
<p>Both kids ended up at schools in cities, which gave them more housing choices as well as more choices in dining, on & off campus.
We especially appreciate that when we are looking for hotel rooms for events as we aren’t limited to what ever we can find- damn the cost, as my sisters family was when they attended events at their daughters rural LAC.</p>
<p>Food quality was pretty important in our family while they were growing up, not just tasty- but organic - free range etc. and while we didn’t tour the dorms, we did consider what choices were available and how the school structured board plans.</p>
<p>Given decent quality of food, I probably would have preferred that they stay on board just so I wouldn’t have to worry about them getting out to shop & having time to plan & prepare meals- (especially since neither had a car), but it seems to have worked out ok for younger D. We can add money to a punch card she can use on campus but she also joined a CSA with her BF and has now changed her long term plans to grad school in nutrition.</p>
<p>University offerings have changed alot over the years. When we toured the public directional university in 2000 for older D, the vegetarian offerings were not much more than a salad bar/ or a noodle & cheese hot dish. But when younger D entered almost 10 years later, the choices had expanded, it wouldn’t be unusual to see pad thai with tofu or Gobi Matar ( cauliflower curry) as well ubiquitous Chix patties that she ate during her summers as a camp counselor.</p>
<p>This is one of the apartment organizations talked about in the article. It’s a pretty popular one. You can click on any city/town and it will show the details. We were happy with the set-up. Not too worried about that particular kid being too distracted. She’s pretty mature and very focused and flat doesn’t have a whole lot of free time.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, my nephew who is at Princeton reported that during his freshman year, he actually didn’t have a bathroom on his floor for his use, and had to go (up or down, I don’t recall) a level. The buildings themselves are charming as can be on the outside, but that wouldn’t sit well with me if I were paying $60K / year for Princeton. And like I said, my son’s residential college at NU has rooms that are ridiculously small given what I’m paying. Quite literally, the 4 of us (H, me, S, D) could not stand in S’s single at the same time, and none of us are big people.</p>
<p>You might find UC’s 1946-1947 general catalog to be interesting. Back then there was a list of approved boarding and lodging houses for women that new female students were expected to live in (if they did not live in the women’s dorm). The estimated room and board costs were higher for women than men. The university’s International House apparently gave extra consideration to “applications from all non-Caucasian Americans and from all foreign students” (implying that discrimination by race and national origin in rental housing was common at the time).</p>
<p>Note that the course Math 116 is titled “Exterior Ballistics”. The description is “The classical theory of motion of a particle subject to the forces of gravity and the resistance of air, together with some recent developments.” Hmmm, what “recent developments” would those be? :)</p>
and while we didn’t tour the dorms, we did consider what choices were available and how the school structured board plans.</p>