Generally Room & Board costs somewhere between $10-$17K per year on college campuses.
Have you sat back and thought about it. That is over $1000 per month to rent a shared room that may or may not have a bathroom. The room which again is shared is no bigger than a studio. Then eat generally in a cafeteria.
And your point? You arenât paying for the room. You are paying for the infrastructure that makes the room possible- snow shoveling the walkway in the winter (if itâs a northern campus). A/C on a Southern campus, janitorial services for common areas, landscaping, security (either a person at the front desk checking IDâs, or the hardware which makes the virtual security possible). The blue light poles outside the dorms so a student can call security immediately if they witness a breakin. Liability insurance so that when your kids drunk roommate climbs onto the roof, falls off, and sues the college for medical costs, pain and suffering, etc. the college has coverage.
Etc.
âThen eat generally in a cafeteria.â
So maybe not the most gourmet - get that. But - eating with peers for all meals supports socialization and, in my view is one of the benefits of college. But thatâs not your point - your point is cost. So, letâs ascribe a value/cost to meals. Clearly you donât put a ton of value on âcafeteriaâ food but the kids eat 3 meals (and at some can come back in addition for snacks). Letâs say $5/meal so $15 a day - in a normal 30 day month thereâs $450 of your $1000 a month.
My take - good luck having your kid not on a meal plan eat for $15/day with their friends and finding a (safe) housing option with all the benefits @blossom described for the remaining $550.
It depends on the school. This year the value of meal and housing costs for many schools is outrageous. Although there are understandable reasons for the issues with on campus dining, I have spent about as much as the meal plan for my S21 to have off campus food due to poor quality and (more shockingly) limited quantity of food.
Would a typical forum-poster parent would be able to rent a place and feed themself on $1,000-$2,000 per month?
In addition to the above you are paying for the experience students have living together on campus. I know my two kids benefited greatly by living on campus (ex. friendships were developed, ease of involvement in campus activities, easy access to library etc.)
IMO if you break a lot of things down to dollars and cents they may not seem worth the money (is that great meal out worth $X/person for one dinner? is that vacation worth $Y for a week away?). A lot comes down to what one is willing to pay for a certain experience.
As with most things, you do have options. If you feel the cost benefit of living on campus is not something you wan to pay for you can either: 1) have the student commute to college or 2) attend a college that does not require students to live on campus get them an apartment (which likely will be less convenient and may not prove to be less expensive).
I guess my general overall thought is that the cost of college is not sustainable in the long term. I know there are plenty of ways to make it cheaper by starting out at a community college.
We can all definitely agree that the costs have outpaced inflation by a lot. I often wonder why is that.
But is it room and board that is the main driver of college cost inflation, or is it tuition?
i think its slightly a money maker for schools; guaranteed income for the freshmen class who usually have to live on campus. Thatâs ok with us; so many learning experiences by being in a dorm. but what i shake my head about - here in the midwest - the dorm costs are usually more than tuition!
Generally Room & Board costs somewhere between $10-$17K per year on college campuses.
Have you sat back and thought about it. That is over $1000 per month to rent a shared room that may or may not have a bathroom. The room which again is shared is no bigger than a studio. Then eat generally in a cafeteria.
Iâm willing to pay for it for several reasons:
Itâs like âAdulting-light.â You get to dip your toe into the adulting waters, but in a semi-controlled environment.
Everybody moving into the dorms as freshmen are going through the same stuff as you are. Thereâs a lot of mutual bonding over that.
Way easier to make friends. And for ** my ** kids (who are not extroverts), this is a big deal. Especially for YDD, who is painfully shy at times.
Easier to form study groups.
Easier to get involved in stuff on campus since you are literally RIGHT THERE all of the time.
I think itâs interesting that some schools require you to live on campus as a freshman. If youâre in the ASU honors college, you have to live on campus in the honors dorms for 2 years.
While itâs definitely been cheaper for us since our D moved off campus, I would havenât changed the dorm experience. Not only is she surrounded by her peers, getting a slow intro to adulting, but having dorm events and bonding activities was a great way to make friends. Plus at her school, there is tutoring on site as well as some of her classes.
I agree that the much bigger expense is tuition.
Here in the northeast r/b is about the same cost as tuition for in state. My kids saved money moving off campus, because they dropped the meal plan and cooked. Right now dd20âs rent is $750 a month in her 6 bedroom apartment in DE. My older kids paid about the same for their share of rent in their NJ college apartments (but those were a little scary, the nicer ones are over $1000 pp). My other daughter in SC is in the most expensive dorm (pretty much the same cost as her siblings old tired freshman dorms) her off campus rent will be around $750 next year but itâs super nice (pool, gym, boat dock, goat yoga). I think itâs very important to dorm students least the first year, although expensive. Even though the dining hall food isnât usually great, itâs quite a step up from what I ate, no tuna avocado poke bowls or omelet stations back then.
What is goat yoga?!
Itâs a trend that been around a few years, literally yoga with goats. I donât know why itâs a thing.
Yes, I have thought about it, a lot in the past week especially, since my daughterâs dorm has had no hot water since last Friday and there is actually an instagram page devoted to cataloging the issues with the food in the cafeteria.
ButâŠmy daughter has met all of her friends from living in the dorms. In the case of her urban school, the dorms provide a quiet oasis in the middle of the city and a great location for students to acclimate to living in the city. In that sense, I happily handed over $16k for this year. My D20, like many others, will be moving off campus next year. It wonât cost much less and sheâll be living in a less desirable neighborhood, so if she had wanted to stay on campus, I would have happily paid for that again.
The board freshman year bothered me more than the room cost. I stupidly calculated it when my daughter went away - the mandatory freshman plan at Duke was about $50 a day. NO WAY could my daughter eat even half that a day. And unfortunately there was no socialization - it was grab and go for most of freshman year which made the cost even more outrageous.
Probably not usually, if you include all of the US colleges and universities, rather than the minority of those which are highly residential and focused on by posters in these forums. Many colleges have mainly commuter students living where they lived before they went to college.
However, non-commuter frosh usually want to live on campus, since they may be unfamiliar with the housing market around the college before they get there.
I donât know about âtypical forum-poster parentâ but that is definitely doable in my area. Itâs actually higher than our mortgage payment, but we bought a long time ago. My almost 21 year old just put in an application for a 2 bedroom 2 bath apartment with a friend in a nice area in a nice complex and itâs right about $1400 for the two of them. My skinny little 20 year old is not going to eat $600 worth of food in a month!
My D22âs soon to be school has fantastic farm to table food. The dorms are okay I think, but not all that. I definitely want my D22 to have that dorm life experience, though, but her college is highly residential anyway. 90% of students are on campus for all 4 years. Room and board combined is $12,050.
So your issue is essentially with the concept of residential colleges - where room and board is a necessity.
Hopefully your student will be able to attend a commuter college, to address your concern.
As far as whether anyone else ever thought of the cost: My daughter attends a University in Manhattan. If a parent makes/permits that choice, then one has to accept the cost of real estate and living there. At least in her case, the total room/board cost was âin the ballparkâ.
Starting Junior year, she rented an apartment with a few other students - but itâs no bigger or nicer than the collegeâs apartment that she shared as a Sophomore. Her rent share, plus utilities, Internet services, etc. actually are a little more than the collegeâs âhousingâ fees - but now she has to walk 15 minutes. The key advantage: she was not limited to any crazy move-in/-out schedule, and had a place in the city to work her internships before/after the semester.
The real monetary difference was the âboardâ (meal plan). After freshman year, sheâs had on-campus or off-campus apartments with a kitchen. So she started grocery shopping and preparing her own breakfast/dinners and weekend meals - keeping only a minimal meal plan to grab quick snacks/lunches between classes, clubs, library hours etc. Adding up all her shopping, brunches, cafĂ©s, restaurant dinners, plus the minimal meal plan, still comes out to less than what the âstandardâ plan would have been each semester, and significantly less than the âfullâ Freshman plan.
But is she going to use electricity, cable, internet, water, trash? Some of that may be included in her rent but not all.
I had two kids who went to college at the same time. One lived in a dorm double, ate at her sorority house (required) for $8000 per year. The other lived in a suite (single room, shared kitchenette and bathrooms) and ate at the cafeteria. $14k. The suite wasnât really nicer, but she did have her own room. Also had to pay for toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc.
For some reason, freshmen had to pay about $3000/sem for dining and upper classmen only $1800. Same food, same everything. Guess freshmen just eat more? My daughterâs was paid for by her scholarship and she never came close to spending all $1800 (she could take it as dining dollars). She was using swipes for her friends, getting food to go and feeding everyone she knew, buying cases of toilet paper from the school store. Still couldnât use it all up.
On the other hand, her boyfriend had a âlunch onlyâ dining plan when he lived in an apartment. He could go to the dining room from 10:30 am to 3 pm. Sometimes heâd eat three times in that period, going at 10:30 for a late breakfast, at noon for lunch, and skating in at 2:59 to eat again (he could stay as long as he liked if he got there before 3). Worked for him.