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At most state schools (including the one that employs me) on-campus room and board now costs at least as much as tuition due to years of upward pressure on amen

At most state schools (including the one that employs me) on-campus room and board now costs at least as much as tuition due to years of upward pressure on amenities from [parents of] students and the resulting ill-considered public/private development deals. I agree that the spending time immersed in the university environment is one of the most important parts of the college experience, but you don't have to get expensively kenneled on campus to do that, just spend time on campus with interesting people and interesting organizations. I would only suggest most people deal with on-campus housing if it is being primarily paid for by a scholarship or grant they won't have to pay back and/or their circumstances don't offer a good alternative. If you're attending a school where there is an option for family (or whatever) that can provide you with a non-distracting environment and a _short_ commute for cheap, do that for a year. Once you establish a cohort of known-reliable friends with similar needs, rent with them, or pick up a modest apartment. I will say, IMO, renting with unknown quantity randos from a campus-predator slumlord _is_ a worse option to university housing, it includes both sets of disadvantages. I'm also of the opinion that you have a substantial number of gen-eds you still have to take (not covered by APs, etc.), and they won't be paid for by a scholarship, do a year or so at a community college. It will be cheaper and better than the university service courses - gigantic sections taught from materials outsourced to ed-tech carpetbaggers, supervised by disinterested graduate students with alarming English skills, optimized to extract tuition from kids who statistically won't make it. I say this after years of discovering my students who took their early calculus sequence at community college, embarrassingly, tend to be more mathematically literate than the ones who did it at the university. I'm not yet convinced if that is because the ones that had the maturity to do it that way are predisposed and/or usually a little older, or the quality of the early sequence at [intentionally unnamed university] are really that poor.

massysett 6y ago
Room and board costing more than tuition is not a new thing and I doubt amenities is the whole reason. I went to a state school over twenty years ago and room and board cost more than tuition. It was hardly amenity-rich: most rooms were doubles with a shared bathroom down the hall, no carpet, old worn furniture, and no air conditioning. The food was cafeteria style where fajita night was a big feature. The rec center was considered glorious but was funded by a separate fee of about a hundred bucks a semester. I suspect room and board costs what it does compared to tuition simply because putting undergrads in a big lecture just doesn’t cost all that much. In addition, the tuition for resident students gets subsidized, while the room and board generally doesn’t.
- secabeen 6y ago
  Also, room and board are normally considered auxiliary enterprises, and self-funding. If they have profits, they contribute those to the university, but they are not budgeted with the general campus funds.

massysett 6y ago

Room and board costing more than tuition is not a new thing and I doubt amenities is the whole reason. I went to a state school over twenty years ago and room and board cost more than tuition. It was hardly amenity-rich: most rooms were doubles with a shared bathroom down the hall, no carpet, old worn furniture, and no air conditioning. The food was cafeteria style where fajita night was a big feature. The rec center was considered glorious but was funded by a separate fee of about a hundred bucks a semester. I suspect room and board costs what it does compared to tuition simply because putting undergrads in a big lecture just doesn’t cost all that much. In addition, the tuition for resident students gets subsidized, while the room and board generally doesn’t.

secabeen 6y ago
Also, room and board are normally considered auxiliary enterprises, and self-funding. If they have profits, they contribute those to the university, but they are not budgeted with the general campus funds.