About those mandatory meal plans …
(Warning: Take your blood pressure medication before you read!)
My daughter is considering the Honors college of a flagship state in the Southwest. The -mandatory- Honors meal plan is $6k for two semesters. Some of the regular -and mandatory- meal plans are in the $5k range in several schools she has applied, with no tiers. I see a commercial freezer in her future :).
I don’t understand how all these hidden/deceptive fees don’t border on the fraudulent.
Imagine if within all those layers of university bureaucracy there were someone responsible for showing the student exactly where his money goes each semester!
I strongly dislike the huge and pricey mandatory meal plans that many schools require for frosh. My kids were lucky that they were frosh before those were req’d. Because we didn’t get “stuck,” we didn’t have the “bad taste in the mouth,” and we bought small meal plans ever year. Now, because families are annoyed, they stop buying meal plans after frosh year.
Many parents of girls feel rightly “ripped off” since their DDs aren’t eating that much.
My pet peeve: the required meal plan that also requires hundreds in “flex dollars” or whatever, which can only be used on food and beverages outside of the cafeterias. There is no reason for a kid with unlimited access to a cafeteria to spend hundreds of additional dollars on campus on other food. I don’t spend that much on food outside of my home.
Based on what I am seeing/hearing, the mandatory freshman meal plan my DDs had were, although seeming high, were modest compared to many other schools. UAB had two levels (so DD took the lower one) and we sucked up the one year at UA.
@Snowme My D is vegan and her required freshman meal plan included $240 in flex dollars for the semester. She has found it very difficult to spend the flex dollars because of the extremely limited vegan options offered by the locations that take flex. Basically she can get french fries. Next semester she’ll be able to drop down to $160 in flex, but even that is going to be far more than she needs.
My D doesn’t eat much, is also vegetarian**, and I plan on buying the cheapest meal plan for her - at least, at first - and letting her rent or buy a fridge to get her own snacks, etc.
The “flex dollars” plans - I can see her never using the flex dollars all up, on food. She doesn’t even drink coffee that much. Besides, there is free coffee and tea - and food! - in the dining halls. Why encourage students to spend money on food elsewhere? Oh, yeah - because the schools have a contract with Chik-fil-a, Papa John’s, Jamba Juice, etc. That’s not my problem, not sending her to college to keep Chik-fil-a in business…
**mostly vegan, she avoids milk and ice cream, but will break down and eat a cheese pizza and doesn’t fret over ingredients in a veggie burger - but I am vegan, myself, so I sympathize with your daughter, Corinthian, especially on a college campus where you don’t have much choice in food options…
$3000/semester comes to $25/day = $175/wk
I appreciate that the dining centers have operating costs to cover. But w the vast economies of scale and captive market they command, this is just plain robbery.
@BeeDAre she is satisfied with the vegan options at the dining halls (she’s at the Claremont consortium so there are 7 dining halls to choose from), but the campus eateries that take flex aren’t very vegan friendly. If she could opt out of paying for “flex” she would.
@GMTplus7 - When you factor in breaks, its even higher than that!
I did factor in breaks.
Small boarding schools w students bodies less than 500 and with teenage boys w infinite appetites can feed their communities on less than $3000/semester, plus accommodate students/faculty w dietary constraints. So I know there’s no justification for colleges to charge that much.
There are decisions made to provide various things that students want on campus - the dining hall situation is labor, and having food ready - yes many schools charge in this area because it is one way they can for freshmen students - it is something almost every 4 year college requires (students on campus and having the meal plan). The dining dollars outside of that is so some of the other businesses that offer kiosk or other food - they have to ensure that students will have funds available to use. The universities know that students that have money on an access card will usually use it - or enough of the students will.
No point in ‘complaining’. The schools are not getting rich off of their food service. You decide where your child goes to school based on all kinds of deciding factors.
Room/Board is pricey. When we priced colleges years ago for first pass often I just compared tuition because I knew that food/board/fees was within a few thousand school to school. I think the scheme of high non-tuition costs makes it easier for schools to offer full/half tuition scholarships.
I could see my son eating his $25/day share, and then some (kidding, sort of!).
I just don’t get having to buy the “bonus bucks” or whatever a particular school calls them. How about we just give him the cash? Yes, I know the vendors want to make $$.
Seems that many colleges are building, expanding, or renovating dorms. The costs have to be made up somehow.
A generation ago, it was more common for residential colleges not to have the enough dorm space for all non commuter frosh, a rather inconvenient situation for those coming from a distance.
Both my kids started college last year, and both were in lower cost towns/cities. D1’s R&B was about $5000 less (about $8000) than her sister’s ($13500), and even lower when she joined a sorority and gave up her meal plan and ate at the house (across the street from her dorm, with the dining hall being about equal distance). D2 did have a full meal plan, required for freshmen, but also had a kitchenette in her dorm and spent extra money on food to have available 24/7 (especially snacks and breakfasts). Amazingly, sophomores are only required to buy a $1700 meal plan (freshman was $2600). Do students suddenly eat less as sophomores? No, the school just found no one was buying plans because they are too expensive at $2600, but more reasonable at $1700, so they force the freshmen to buy the expensive ones. The school is also 75% male, but the girls pay the same amount and the prices are set based on the average student. Most sophomores take the entire $1700 as flex dollars and eat at the deli, smoothies, and usually only a few meals a week in the dining hall.
D2 told me many of her friends live off campus but still get the $1700 in flex dollars on their cards because it is ‘easier’ just to swipe at the deli than to buy groceries and make a sandwich. She is going to be so disappointed next year when she won’t have that on her account! Her boyfriend has a ‘lunch’ meal plan where he can eat in the dining hall once per weekday. Even that is pretty expensive.
My university wants $1200 for a month and a half of meals. My university apartment has a gas oven and a four burner stovetop, however, so I typically cook when I have the energy and eat frozen meals that are still cheaper than the meal plan when I don’t. I very rarely eat on campus. I find the food quality abysmal and the prices high, and stuff I cook myself typically tastes better at a far lower cost. I only eat school food if there is some sort of time crunch.
I’m glad I’m not the only person who realizes that dorm and meal plans don’t add up. Dorms seem to cost $600-$700 a month for the pleasure of sharing a bleak tiny room in a town where I can purchase a 2BR townhouse for less than $150k.
One school we looked at is building a “lazy river” (water park) feature in a new student rec building and another has a 24 hour library with 24 hour coffee shop. I’m also surprised that Chick Fil A is omnipresent considering the awkward political leanings of its owners. Another school suggests parents load the student card on line so students can use it to pay for everything in the bookstore as well as tickets to sports and plays and concerts. I wonder if many students understand how to manage money with these debit cards.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave …
Seriously, I’d be able to better tolerate a lot of these business practices (and that’s what they are) if the nonprofit college and universities perpetuating them had to be a WHOLE lot more transparent about where the money is going and who, in the end, profits. Nobody likes to feel like their educational institution is fleecing them with the same practices used by a slick auto salesman.