<p>Well then if they’ve got that down pat, its would be a non issue whether they had laundry service or not. Like 2VU0609, mine benefitted during a Duke TIP program one summer. He definitely appreciated it. But both he and DS#1 were pretty skilled at doing their own laundry before they went to college.</p>
<p>My brother was clueless when he went to college and poured a boatload of bleach into his whites. HE ended up with what we referred to as his religious underwear- it was his holy underwear.</p>
<p>Laundry for students is not a bad idea to begin with. The most common one is the optional-fees for laundry. Most school show an average cost per year for this services, and this option does actually help some students realize the money they can serve per year doing their own laundry, while leaving the option for students that are sick, out for athletics/conferences on weekends or just too spoiled to lift their finger to learn basic personal cleanliness.
Many prestigious private and LACs have been and still offering this optional services.
I just did not know Davidson’s was free for all. Now that was a VERY BAD idea, so Its good news to see it end.</p>
<p>Good grief. Both my kids started doing their own laundry in middle school. This is not an arcane skill! If they didn’t get it done, they had nothing to wear. Ta da! By the time they went to college they were pros whose only concern was that the commercial machines didn’t have as many settings as our home machine.</p>
<p>I’m waiting for some parent to post that their snowflake doesn’t have tiiiimmmme to do laundry because they have to study soooooo much. My freshman roommate’s dad was a traveling salesman who would make a point of stopping by to pick up her laundry and then return it so mommy could take care of it. The reason? “I didn’t send my daughter to college to do laundry.” People are nuts . Davidson was nuts. </p>
<p>@jym626 I understand your point, but my wife and I had the same reaction. Having your laundry done for free is a bit removed from how the real world works. It didn’t matter in the end, as my D felt no love for Davidson on any front. So the laundry thing certainly wasn’t the deal-breaker.</p>
<p>Good Lord, people. The Davidson laundry is a (mostly) charming anachronism, not a sign of the decline and fall of Western civilization. It dates back about ninety years and was instituted by the college administration for “hygenic and other reasons.” (Read: The white male students of the day never washed their own clothing.) Times have obviously changed, but the facility was still there and students seem to appreciate it. It also has been a source of some decent jobs in a little Southern town that could use them, including one position filled by Ms. Lula Bell Houston, who worked there for 57 years and had the place named in her honor when she retired. </p>
<p>I’m not a Davidson guy, but as someone who tends to appreciate quirky things about colleges, I’ll be sad to see the laundry go. Perhaps someone will lease it out to run a fee-for-service operation and save a few of the jobs. </p>
<p>^^ I assume that was directed at me. I certainly wasn’t expecting everyone to share my views on this. We’ll agree to disagree as to how charming the practice is/was, although I would gather Ms. Lula Bell had some great stories to tell.</p>
<p>OK, but to my knowledge, Davidson was the last college to offer the service for free. I thought I heard that when we did the tour last year. To me, that makes a difference. Either way, both my kids will be doing their own laundry at college. I will not budge on this!</p>
<p>And by “free,” I assume you mean “included in the $60,000 cover charge,” although the reported cost of running the laundry works out to about $250 per student per year, which seems pretty darn efficient to me. </p>
<p>True story - we have friends whose D went away to college, and not close enough to come home on the weekends so mom could do her laundry. About halfway thru the 1st semester, mom notices quite a few credit card charges from a department store near D’s school. Turns out that dear D didn’t want to/know how to do laundry, so when she ran out of clean underwear, she went out and bought new underwear. </p>
<p>^Many of my friends in college did this. Doesn’t see like a big deal if it doesn’t bother the parents. At some point the kid will have to do/pay for clean underwear herself, and presumably she will figure it out.</p>
<p>Many of your friends bought new underwear because they had none clean? You’re serious? I lived away from home during college, and I’ve never heard of such a thing. It sounds like the epitome of both laziness and wastefulness (yeah, I know, they’re only kids, but still). BTW, It did bother the parents. It won’t bother me, though, as it won’t happen.</p>
<p>Even with the reported $400,000 savings, Davidson still had a pretty hefty tuition hike this year, so I don’t see the savings getting passed on to the students.</p>
<p>I laughed when I first heard about this perk, but I agree it isn’t the end of civilization. D does her laundry at school (when she runs out of clothes, although it sounds like folding wasn’t a priority for her), and she did it at home before she left, but certainly having a pre-paid (ie, to her free) meal plan and going to the food court at school with a huge selection of food prepared for her is not a real-world experience either.</p>
<p>My boys (at least the two who are not in 3rd grade) can and do wash their own clothes. This did not stop oldest from bringing home a large suitcase full of dirty clothes at the end of freshmen year because classwork and everything else (including packing to vacate dorm 2 hrs after last final) took over. I did help him out with laundry in this case since he was only home for 4 days before returning to school to work in a lab over the summer.</p>
<p>My previous comment was meant tongue and cheek. However, my FIL did send his laundry home to the Bronx from Syracuse every two wks when he was in college. Times have changed.</p>
<p>sschickens, I think you’d be surprised at some of the things college kids do. I went to a college with a lot of wealthy, coddled kids who were helpless at a lot of things. One girl I knew had never made a haircut appointment, as Mummy had always had the hairdresser come to her house.</p>
<p>“Davidson was crossed off the list after visiting. Part of the reason was the fact that laundry was done for students. Wife and I thought this practice was very odd. Send your kid to university to learn self-reliance and responsibility, and someone else does your laundry?”</p>
<p>Isn’t there a thread for “Dumbest reason a kid won’t look at a school?” Or maybe it was a parent thing.</p>
<p>S1 spent last summer in Italy where he had to hand wash and line dry his clothes…actually, he never mentioned much about it until he came home…seems things take a lot longer to dry on humid days. He has the paid laundry service at Harvard. No point in elevating laundry to some sort of benchmark for self sufficiency in life. it’s not…it’s easy to learn, easy to do, and easy to find someone else to do it.</p>