David Michael Miller
First-year students at UW-Madison now must pay for a mandatory meal plan, which can be used at dining halls like Gordon Center.
Looking back at her time at UW-Madison, recent graduate Tiffany Sneed shakes her head and sighs in relief that she survived living in the dorms.
It wasn’t her room’s tiny size, the communal bathrooms, or annoying roommates that stressed Sneed out. It was the cost. A Milwaukee native and first-generation college student, Sneed realized a semester into her freshman year that she couldn’t afford living in the dorms.
“I was totally anxious for days, thinking about dropping out once a week. I was considering the worst possible outcome if I didn’t have a financial breakthrough,” Sneed says. “My mentality was how to get more money.”
She got into a routine of donating plasma every week and taking iron supplements so she could donate more frequently. She sometimes skipped class so she could work. The stress took its toll; her GPA dropped below 2.0 her freshman year and she struggled with depression.
Sneed isn’t alone. The majority of U.S. college students struggle to pay for higher education, according to a 2017 report by the Institute for Higher Education Policy. While the rising cost of college tuition has received a lot of attention, recent studies show growing room and board costs are a big driver of the expense, according to a 2017 study by the Urban Institute.
Although tuition has increased by 45 percent in the past decade, room and board cost increases at public four-year universities have also gone up by 28 percent during that same period. That’s more than the 20 percent cumulative rate of inflation the Bureau Labor of Statistics set during that time.
At UW-Madison, rates for room and board have slowly risen in recent years. Starting in 2014, average room and board expenses calculated by the Office of Financial Aid have increased annually by about $200. In 2015, there was a steep increase of $1,642. And last year, the university began charging students for mandatory meal plans, further increasing the cost of college.
UW Housing Communications spokesman Brendon Dybdahl says the university tries to keep rates as low as possible.
“Housing generally plans for a modest 3 percent increase in room and dining rates, which allows us to maintain our quality of service and facilities while covering cost increases for services, food, utilities, labor and supplies, as well as the costs of renovation projects, which are needed to maintain our facilities and meet student expectations,” Dybdahl says.
UW Housing and Dining has received some heat from students over the affordability of its new mandatory $1,400 annual meal plan, which was introduced at the start of 2018. Before, students could deposit money in their Wiscard at their leisure to spend on food, textbooks and other things. Now first-year students have to choose between three tiers, ranging from $1,400 to $3,100, to spend on dining halls. After the first year, students are no longer required to pay for a meal plan.
University Housing claims that among the Big Ten schools, UW-Madison has one of the lowest rates for room and board with the meal plan included. Other Big Ten schools charge $9,800 to $12,250 for room and board. UW-Madison’s rates vary depending on the dorm and meal plan, but the average is around $11,500.
While UW’s minimum meal plan costs $1,400, other Big Ten universities, including the University of Minnesota and Ohio State, charge upwards of $3,700. Indiana University-Bloomington, whose tuition is similar to UW-Madison’s, offers a five-tier meal plan for infrequent and frequent users, ranging from $500 to $4,500.
Dybdahl says that UW-Madison’s mandatory meal plan is intended to help families budget for food costs but also give Housing some predictability in preparing food. Laurent Heller, vice chancellor for finance and administration, said in a news release that the price increases will help boost the generally low wages for Housing and Dining staff.
Most of the University Housing’s budget comes from rent and food, says Jeff Novak, Housing and Dining director. It does not receive state funds. It’s also in the process of increasing the variety of food options and renovating some of the residence halls.
Novak argues that UW’s housing is affordable for students and that the university will work with students who have financial troubles.
“We work really hard to keep our prices as low as possible,” Novak says. UW-Madison is the second cheapest in the Big Ten.
Advisory groups like the Residential Halls Board gather student input to improve the residential experience, Novak says. Representatives from each dorm meet with Novak during the school year to get feedback from students on what’s on the horizon for residence halls and to collaborate on dorm designs.
Sneed was a representative for one of the dorms her sophomore year. She thought she’d be able to voice her concerns on the cost of housing, but found the conversation was dominated by residents who lived more comfortably in the dorms.
“These were very well-off kids complaining about the food and how the food tastes and not the price of the food or the price of the dorms,” says Sneed. Sneed eventually appealed to be released from her housing contract, a process that took months.
Isabel Miranda, a first-generation college student, also struggled to make ends meet living in the dorms her freshman year.
In her second semester, she was $1,000 short for housing fees. In the first half of her sophomore year, to reduce costs, she took online classes from her family’s home in Milwaukee. In the second half of the year, she commuted twice a week from Milwaukee.
Miranda considered transferring to UW-Milwaukee but chose to remain at UW-Madison in order to pursue a degree in community and nonprofit leadership, a program UW-Milwaukee doesn’t offer. She misses living like a normal college student and getting involved in student organizations.
“I miss living on campus and going to classes right out of bed,” Miranda says. “But I don’t want to be thousands in debt when I graduate.”
[This article has been updated to include the correct spelling of Brendon Dybdahl and note that UW-Madison offers the second cheapest dorm rents in the Big Ten.]
