Ha Ha. In my fridge, red would have been ‘Known source of toxins and/or disease’
Marie: Graduate school is not college. 
So it’s not about “10 years of college”. I think we can all agree that kids who spend more than 5 years to get their BA/BS should be taking a break, work a while, and resume their education once they’ve earned some money (and learned a bit about time management, responsibility, etc.)
Not that I think they should be starving either, but kids who, say, wasted their food allowance on a one month supply of beer should suffer some consequences for their bad choices.
However, that’s not what’s being discussed here - we’re talking about hunger. (Not a little pang that come around 4 or 11pm but actually having a growing body that does not have sufficient fuel, nutrients that you’re missing and are making you weak or sick, the desperation of having such a basic need unmet, etc. That’s hunger.)
10 years of education isn’t 10 years of college. Becoming a doctor is worth the time and energy, even if it means less earning power in the short run.
Also, most of us aren’t discussing snacks, but actual meals and meal plans.
Considering how many college students may be hungry (ie., “suffer from hunger”, not “little pang at 4pm or midnight”) and how much food is wasted in college cafeterias, isn’t it possible to imagine that a less wasteful system can be designed?.. Can’t an app be designed, actually, to optimize this?
Admittedly, I have no clue what we are talking about since all schools have a COA and if we are talking about it being too low and unlivable that is one thing. However, that is so contrary to my experience that I am slightly baffled. The ten year reference was in response to something upthread about not being able to feed oneself and I do think after ten years in the workforce most people should be okay. If not, this is a much bigger than college problem.
I agree a less wasteful system can be designed for many schools.
Older Ds school has an ala carte system, for the most part. You take what you are going to eat. Schools with unlimited meals, must charge higher prices, or lower food quality, as well as deal with discarding food everyday.
Unless they have hogs out back &/ or an enormous compost pile, schools( students) then have to pay for discarding the waste.
Wasted food also means wasted water & other resources.
http://www.endfoodwastenow.org/index.php/issues/issues-schools
So justonedad-you figured out how to get extra food by eating food provided by your job and a kind worker basically handing you food from her supplies. Legally, I hope. Surely you know that not all students get lucky enough to have a job where people feed them for free. Even fast food places limit workers to perhaps one meal per shift and they generally don’t allow FT work because that would mean paying benefits. So kids would be working daily and thus not eating extra food daily.
Marie-yes, I do think some colleges do not figure into account full meal plans for students on aid. And not all colleges are surround by dozens of restaurants. Mine certainly wasn’t. There were maybe 3, a couple more if one had a car. My work study paid a token amount and the rest was a reduction in fees to to college. I saw very little cash.
EK-I don’t understand your snark and meanness to Romani. She is doing far more than most young people her age-and supporting her parents while she does it. She’s working towards a degree that will directly help any number of women and children so that THEY have better lives. It’s not all about STEM in the real world. And Romani never said she didn’t know how to find a good job. But don’t tell me that you think it’s just as easy to make a decent living without a college education as with one. Just because YOU did it-years ago when things were different, doesn’t mean it’s the same today. I know just as many who struggle without that degree as those who aren’t.
MYOS-you get it. good for you.
People-this isn’t about “snacks” for 1 year or 10. It’s about food deserts, food inequality, kids completely tapped out and whose parents are completely tapped out. It’s about colleges having widely differing meals options and/or without on-campus sites to grab a late meal or grocery supplies. It’s about boys still growing until they’re almost past college age and needing more than a last meal of the day at 5 p.m. It’s about rural campuses with few job options nearby. It’s surprising that such smart people can’t seem to see past their own experiences.
Well, these factors need to be considered when choosing a school, though. if you personally think you need a lot more meals than the school provides and it is located in a food desert then you don’t choose to attend that school. I still don’t know what people want here. Now, it sounds like you want the dining hall to have a free period after the swipers go through the line. Really?
Not all dining halls have swipes! Haven’t you seen that in the other comments? Some halls are open for meals, you eat, they close. Wouldn’t it be better for kids with diverse schedules to have halls open longer? That’s just one possibility. But it was brought up that some kids can’t get to the halls at normal mealtimes so they don’t eat. I wasn’t saying they should have 24/7 access for free.
And it’s really easy to say they coulda/shoulda/woulda but I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking over the catalogs and websites at the schools D is looking at and not every single little detail is clear. Maybe a family doesn’t think that there won’t be cafs still open when the kid finishes late practices or that only a few offer jobs to college students or that meal plans are very restricted. And not everyone can tour colleges and college town ahead of time.
I just don’t understand the mentality that someone without a college degree is too dumb to live & will not be able to support themselves. It’s terribly insulting to the hundreds of thousands of people who do that everyday.
I also don’t understand the mentality that pushes a recent college grad to take on additional loans for grad school, in hopes that the job they eventually find makes it worth it. If your chosen career demands grad school and it fits in with your plans & is affordable then great!
But how many students are entering grad schools because they haven’t had many offers after college, and they don’t know what else to do with themselves?
None of this has to do with students wasting food while others or going hungry.
There are college students living on loans who are living better right now than they will live again for quite a while. Unfortunately. There are also college grads working at restaurants and coffee bars.
I am not taking on additional loans for grad school.
In fact, the school pays me. I am a grad student. Being a student is my job. I am paying for food just fine now but I couldn’t when I was an undergrad because my COA was somewhere in the ballpark of 25k. I worked full time, got scholarships, still couldn’t make ends meet.
I’ve more than paid back in taxes anything I dared use to keep myself alive.
Around HERE, it is EXTREMELY difficult to get a job with a living wage without having a degree. If you make minimum wage, which many, MANY adults with children do, even working full time, you are eligible for food stamps because that is not enough to pay your rent.
It may sound a bit irrelevant, but the problem of not being able to pay for unlimited meal plan is that it also
is not healthy…it kind sounds weird but if you have limited swipes, you have to make the best of them. For example, you eat only once a day but as much as you CAN(not you want), but since you don’t have control over calories of food provided in dining hall-and who in the world counts calorie of every dish they eat in college-you end up eating much more than recommended calories, and…actually gain weight, which is quite ironic
No. I paid for a 19-meal plan so I was entitled to both breakfast and lunch. Nevertheless, I guarantee you that very few cafeteria workers would withhold 11 cents worth of oatmeal and 44 cents worth of sandwich from a student. Obnoxious comment about legality noted, though.
I didn’t get ‘lucky’. I applied for that job. No one else would work the early shift. They had a hard time filling it. Other workers wouldn’t show up at 5:15 am. I had to in order to earn money and fit everything into a day.
The whole point was how little motivation and wherewithal it actually takes to feed yourself in college.
I’m not from a low income family, so my experience really only comes from close friends who were raised in low income families. But if a student grew up in a family where they never really knew where their next meal was going to come from or they had to skip meals for financial reasons or if they had to really stretch a small food budget for the entire family, wouldn’t how they are going to feed themselves be a real concern when they move away from home (to anywhere, let alone college)? If the student is an athlete with late practices, wouldn’t they already know that they need options for eating late after practice? Presumably, they played the sport in high school, and if they are a recruited athlete, had the opportunity to talk to the coach. Wouldn’t employment or options for employment be a real concern when they are moving away from home? If this is a kid who has always had a job because they needed to help support their family, wouldn’t that be a very real concern (more so, perhaps, than all of the majors or academic program questions that people are always asking about on CC)? I know that students from families where no one has ever gone to college may not have the knowledge or resources to know a lot about applying to college and things to look for, but if you grew up in a world where money and food were very pressing concerns, then I would hope you would prioritize issues of how you are going to live if you move away from home–how will you eat, where will you live, and how will you pay for it. I can see wealthy kids thinking all of these things just fall from the sky magically and instead focusing on other things like majors offered and study abroad opportunities, while forgoing any interest in dining hall hours.
My experience is very limited to my world–as everyone else’s is, as well–but my close friends who were from low income families all had jobs lined up when they began college (that they had begun applying to over the summer) because it was never a question whether they were going to work or not. They had always had a job since they were old enough to work. None of them had applied to schools where there was a dearth of employment opportunities, but whether this was due to diligence on their part or just happening to apply to large state schools in the area, I never asked. I know some students who worked online too, so I would imagine that could be an option for students that aren’t able to get employment on or off campus. They took the option to cook for themselves despite the inconvenience rather than meal plans or eating out as soon as they could because it was just much less expensive, but I understand that perhaps there are situations where this may not be the case.
I’m not saying there isn’t a problem because if anyone is going hungry, then clearly there is a problem. I think I’m just having trouble wrapping my head around what the root of the problem is. Although, I’m sure with all problems it’s a great number of different things coming into play. Is it that some schools have dining halls that close early and aren’t open on weekends? If these schools extend their dining hall hours, wouldn’t that make the meal plans or fees more expensive because the school needs a way to pay for those extended hours? And if families are already struggling to pay for it, then this would put an additional burden on the families.
What if the only affordable school is the one with the below-par meal plan or one that’s located in a food desert? It’s not that simple as “choose the ideal school that is affordable, has a convenient meal plan, and plenty of jobs around it”, in most cases it’s the school that has the most advantages and the fewest disadvantages. Also, sometimes, the family doesn’t realize how the meal plans work or that the cafeteria may close before the students are back from practice or from work, that not all cafeterias allow packed meals or food to be taken out, etc.
I think that colleges should have a system that pairs lower income (or loophole students, like students with step-parents who won’t pay) with cafeteria jobs and meals, as well as a way to manage waste so that it’s not wasted but goes to those in need in their community, and that would include students. This way, everyone benefits.
I like Post 172. This seems to be about imagining that low income students just get plopped onto campuses and have no idea how to find enough food. If there is not enough food at the affordable school then the school is not affordable. Also, I agree with EK at some point this becomes extremely insulting to the low income student who managed to get into the school in the first place and I really think and very much hope they are smart enough to figure out eating. Also, the low income kids I know personally do not want to be paired with an upper income buddy to guide them through the challenging campus dining process. Sigh.
*What if the only affordable school is the one with the below-par meal plan or one that’s located in a food desert? *
Well as long as we are making up hypothetical situations.
It’s not affordable if your cost of attendance is not affordable.
You can check out expenses beforehand. I assume you would identify expenses and how you would meet them when considering other large purchases, like a house or a car.
If it is more than you have budgeted for then you need to do what others do in that situation.
Step back, evaluate your options and make a decision you can live with, rather than making the decision * first* and only deciding after you have done so, that it is unworkable.
Not everyone has to go to live away college right after high school graduation.
Then you don’t go. If “affordable” means not eating, then the school is not affordable, in my opinion. It’s unfortunate that not every student gets the luxury of going to a four-year university, while living on campus with a full meal plan for all four years, right after high school. It really is. But that’s a much bigger issue of making higher education affordable than just giving low income kids extra food.
I know you can’t get everything you want, but the key is to find an affordable school. All schools that are not affordable (and this includes schools where you would not have enough money to pay for food) should not be on the list because… well, they are not affordable. From the affordable options, you have to pick the best one or make another plan. Some students can make four-year universities work, some students can make community college work, and some students can’t. Food should go into the budget, just like food goes into any personal budget (at least everyone I’ve made). You don’t need a convenient meal plan, but you do need a plan for how you are going to feed yourself. You don’t need plenty of jobs around it, but you do need a plan for how you are going to afford it.
There are a lot of gaps in terms of knowledge about colleges between higher and lower income families, and I’m sure this is part of it. Schools, in particular, need to get a lot more resources to help disadvantaged students know more about qualifying for and finding affordable schools. But just because you don’t know something doesn’t mean you can’t know it. Surely, they realize that the dining hall is not open 24/7 and closes at some point, so you can look up that time or you can ask the school. If your schedule is so tightly packed that you can’t work “eat when the dining hall is open” into it, than you either don’t eat or you need to change something (and trust me, I’ve had schedules that were so tight that I just didn’t eat–I know what it’s like to make those decisions but it was still a decision).
At my school, many on campus jobs were restricted to work study students or gave priority to work study students, including all of the dining hall jobs (which included a free meal with every shift). I realize it’s FAR from a perfect system, but it is something to the effect of what you are proposing. I don’t know if there’s a real practical way to enact the system your proposing, especially since there may not be enough cafeteria jobs to go around.
I have never intended to insult low-income people as being incapable of making smart choice about college. Many do and do it well. However, you cannot plan for all possibilities and a low-income person has less in the way of options if things change or if they’ve missed something. Even in today’s internet age it’s possible to think you’ve checked every facet of living away from home and still miss something. The difference is that many kids have parents who can send cash, or give their kids a credit card or send regular care packages. The kids don’t have to compete with hundreds of others for jobs. And so on. When you’re living on the margin, a small set back could mean going hungry. I work with people like this every day-and they are not even in college. They are not stupid. But they often do not have the resources to bounce back if even one small setback happens.
Kids do NOT have go to college right after HS, but I think it’s been proven that once kids start in another direction or drop out, it’s much harder to go later on. Many low-income kids can get aid that doesn’t include heavy loans and go away. I don’t think we should be DISCOURAGING them from even trying, and it sounds like that’s what you’re saying, EK.
What I am saying, as are others, is that it shouldn’t come down to a choice of eating or not at colleges where the average meal plan costs more than even an average sized family would spend on groceries in that same amount of time. There is no one-size fits all solution but saying that kids shouldn’t bother to go because the pricing structures and meal plans don’t always make sense seems short-sighted.
Bootstraps again. If that’s not enough, low income students should know their station in life, realize their limitations, get a job or a trade if they can afford the schooling for that, and work for years until they have saved enough to afford to attend college and eat. Never mind that by the time that happens, if it does, they’ll be wondering how to send their own children to college I’m guessing it would be irresponsible for them to have children without making sure the funds for all their expenses and education were accounted for. For those who had managed to pay their own way years ago, the federal grants and loans and meager earnings went a lot further then than they do now. The situation has changed.
@romanigypsyeyes and others, I am truly impressed with the restraint you’ve managed in all your posts here. Some are living in a poverty of another kind, which can’t be cured by any amount of money. I actually feel sorry for them. Thank you for sharing your experiences as I’m sure you have enlightened many
Thank you to all who have reached out to struggling students, both on this thread and in their lives, and thank you to those who have tried to contribute with some possible solutions. I think the reason I found the article compelling and wanted to share it here is that I was hoping to raise awareness of the problem(s). I think this purpose has been met. I’ve gained insights into the problem as well.
YES! Exactly, Somuch2learn! You mention bootstraps and all throughout this thread I keep remembering this Thurgood Marshall quote: “None of us got where we are solely by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. We got here because somebody - a parent, a teacher, an Ivy League crony or a few nuns - bent down and helped us pick up our boots.”
I think you nailed the heart of the problem-that loans and grants went a lot farther when we were young then now, when a year of college can be 10X what we paid back in the day. I don’t think that should mean that only those who can pay for every possible contingency should just skip higher education. Even having every HS offer REAL college planning would be a step in the right direction.