@sseamom - I totally agree with you. There are many, many people who are hungry or food insecure - some of whom work really hard but, for reasons beyond their control, cannot make ends meet. This includes students and other low-income workers. There are just not enough safety nets. Food banks are great, but even they have requirements for residency, family size, etc. Single young people and students are probably the last in line to get help. I admire anyone with enough gumption to pursue higher education (which has gotten ridiculously expensive) and wish there were more resources to help out those who are struggling. Remember, not all college students are 19 yr olds with parents helping.
I don’t know this - Do financial aid plans assume the bare minimum meal plan, or do they assume the “full-up” meal plan?
Personally, one of my kids’ schools has one meal plan for everybody 7 days a week, and the other has a dizzying array of meal plans. I far prefer the first method. I think it’s a good equalizer to have everyone on the same plan.
Megpmom-I work at a church in a lower-income area and we get calls every week from people who need every kind of help you can imagine. They calls us AFTER they’ve learned that all the traditional sources are tapped out. Even some of the food banks are running out. Many of them work, but it’s just not enough. And don’t even get me started on housing. The wait list for some low-income housing is 5 years long. And landlords of low-income places treat their tenants like dogs, maybe worse. Dogs are popular in Seattle.
EK-yes, it’s true that my husband didn’t have to go to college. Stupid him, wasting all that money when he could have been working. But he wanted something more than his parents and older sisters had (his brother got a full-ride to an OOS school). He was willing to sacrifice to get it, and it has paid off over the years. It was never about entitlement. I used his story as an example of how it might be that a person in college might not have an extra dime to buy a banana or tub of yogurt.
"So is the idea that every college just feeds everyone plenty and that outside food isn’t necessary, as is the thinking that all students will have the money to supplement. "
Is there a case when a FULL meal plan (which I suppose is 21 meals - maybe 20 if they bundle Sunday breakfast/lunch together) isn’t sufficient to feed someone?
True.
When we first married, and had a child, my H was laid off when the shipyards closed. I was attending community college at night and working as a nanny during the day, while H did odd jobs to keep busy, but you only can charge so much to mow grass!
We could have gotten food stamps, but we didn’t even think of it actually. It can be difficult to put together the available resources if you don’t know where to start, but your local church should know of more and the local libraries have a great deal of information about community resources.
pizzagirl is describing the ideal, eating communal meals, socializing with peers. That’s fine, and certainly can be done for less than the ‘full meal plan’ of 21 meal per week and may or may not be more convenient for students. My daughter has a full meal plan and a kitchenette (no stove) in her suite. Both. There is always food there but most often they eat at the dining hall which is convenient between classes but not so convenient to the dorms, probably about 1/2 mile away. Yes, there are trolley buses, but those are inconvenient too. The cafeteria can be worse than HS, with cliques of friends, who sits with whom, and sometimes my daughter just doesn’t want to deal with that either.
I agree that if you are paying for it (and boy am I paying for it) boxed lunches or taking fruit from the cafeteria should be available. At DD’s school, the dining hall is a big room of stations, and the hall itself is open 7am to 9pm, so anyone can eat whenever he wants, but nothing can be taken out and sometimes my daughter just doesn’t have the 15 minutes to sit down to eat.
In my college days, the dorm had a pretty nice kitchen in the basement, but no one used it for meals. It was for baking and special occasions (we had some great cooks) or making a pizza (although it was easier to call for one already made). We are in the dining hall. This was before the days of microwaves and mini fridges. We used the space between the double windows as a refrigerator (it was perfect for beer), and we ‘cooked’ on popcorn poppers and with coffee pots and other plug in things.
Boys who didn’t cook or didn’t want to cook got jobs as hashers in the sorority houses, or got jobs in restaurants where you usually got a meal for every shift you worked. The hashers then married the sorority girls and lived happily ever after.
Sseamom, I certainly did not call your husband names, I don’t know why you are getting so upset.
There are many roads to take through adulthood and it has been pointed out many times on CC, most college students do not go attend directly from high school. It is definitely not required to do so.
"There is always food there but most often they eat at the dining hall which is convenient between classes but not so convenient to the dorms, probably about 1/2 mile away. "
That’s unfortunate. That’s a really bad set-up IMO to have a dining hall not close to the dorms. I guess I was assuming the situations I’m familiar with, with the dining hall either in the building itself or in a nearby dorm no more than a 5 minute walk and easily accessible. Probably a bad assumption on my part.
@emeraldkity4
Int students are allowed to do on campus work only.
I dont know about others but at least in our school, lots of jobsrequire pre work rexperience or Gpa which I have neither.
I also heard that its harder to get a job as a foreigner in school as you become upperclassman
When these students are registering, there’s every appearance that the money is there. Tuition is paid. The dorm fees are paid. A meal plan is bought. A job is often lined up to cover extra expenses. How are parents to know that the meal plans the college is offering aren’t going to be enough?
Stuff happens…like that organic chemistry that ends up costing $300 when you’ve only budget $300 for all of your books. There are lots of reasons why students don’t always have enough money. And not everyone is on a meal plan! many students live at home or off campus. There is no extra money up front to pay for a meal plan.
D’s LAC would have bag meals…sandwich, chips, fruit and drink for when they were going to be back on campus past dinner hours 7 o clock…I think ? But even when they were going off campus for a regatta, they still sent bagged lunches for the students. After reading some of these posts, I need to tell her she was fortunate to get what she got.
The meal plans state what is covered, how many meals, where your points can be used, etc.
At least at the public schools we were considering.
Each school seems to do it a little differently, that’s one of the things you compare to see if it will work for you.
If that is too difficult, I’m beginning to see how so many people end up with home mortgages/ school loans that they can’t imagine how they are going to pay back.
I’m sorry if I am slow, but I dropped out of high school, I found a college for my oldest without CC( although it was after the Internet), I really don’t see what is so difficult about researching expenses?
Those who want the schools to provide more without charging more to students, how do you want that to be covered? Do you want taxes to be raised to provide more money to schools, or do you want the schools to raise COA? It’s not clear what you want.
The thread is titled tuition vs. food which sounds like an unaffordable school in the first place to me.
But, I agree EK what is wanted here is unclear beyond it would be nice if everyone could have everything they desire at any college regardless of cost including a free supply of round-the-clock snacks.
EK, I am not “upset” but you have implied more than once that students who go to college without having researched all possible expenses are poor planners, or worse, “entitled”. Actually, I think students who are willing to miss some meals to get an education are the opposite of entitled.
Marie, EK, I think some of us are speculating about what might work. I think having some kind of food available after hours but still included in the meal plan would be a start. Allowing students to take food out of the caf might also help. Having fully stocked kitchens would be even better. D toured one college that is not near good public transportation, but it has a free shuttle to the grocery store-that’s also good.
Solutions are not going to be universal, as different colleges have different meal options in place now, and widely varying charges for them. And yes, of course it would be ideal if all parents and kids sat down and researched every last contingency when it comes to costs, but it’s easy to miss nuances, especially if you’re uneducated or English is not your first language or you don’t read well or, well, there are lots of reasons.
It’s wonderful that you were able to decode all the necessary expenses, EK. Not everyone can. There are several families at D’s school who don’t even have internet, and some libraries have time limits on internet use. Others don’t speak English, let alone read hundreds of pages of “student life” details. If there weren’t teachers willing to help these families through the college process, INCLUDING researching meals plans, how would they even know where to start?
The problem with meal plans, is that you have to PAY for meal plans. So, if you can afford unlimited, ala carte meal plans - great. But many people cannot afford that (we couldn’t), so they pick smaller meal plans or no meal plan. Result - sometimes the kids go hungry unless they can buy extra food. And, many times, they have no extra money to buy more food. I don’t see anything lazy or entitled or “poor planning” - I just call it being poor or low income. Does that mean that the kid shouldn’t go to college? Not to me - but it means that perhaps colleges or communities should have more resources to help those kids - especially if its an occasional thing.
I know that at my D’s school, the kids were able to “donate” their unused meal swipes at the end of the year and that money went to local food banks. I thought that was pretty neat. Although my D and her friends often “donated” swipes to each other. During her last two years, when she lived off campus on a tight budget, my D often used friends’ swipes to eat in the cafeteria. She had nice friends. (I did feel a little for the parents who had paid for those swipes, but I’m assuming that they would have gone used. Oh, any my kid paid for the booze that their kids drank at her apartment. :))
“A meal plan is bought. A job is often lined up to cover extra expenses. How are parents to know that the meal plans the college is offering aren’t going to be enough?”
I don’t know what the question is - this seems obvious. Everyone pretty much knows you need to eat 3 meals a day. Gee, if you pick the meal plan that is 20-21 meals a week, it’s going to be enough. If you pick the meal plan that is 10 meals a week (2 meals on weekdays, no breakfast and nothing on the weekends) then obviously you need to figure out how to cover the food during those other times. What do you mean, “how would parents not know”?
No one has answered the question - what types of meal plans do FA packages typically factor in? 10 meals a week? 14 meals? The full 21?
I guess that works if meal plans are sold by the number of meals, @Pizzagirl. Not all of them are; at least they weren’t when I went to school.
The COA includes an estimated cost of room and board. In our experience there is a lot of gravy in these numbers. In other words, you can very easily spend less than the estimates if do not live in the most expensive housing or swipe every meal.