In February 2014, the university announced that meal plans would become mandatory in the fall of 2016 for all students living on campus, even if they live in a residence hall equipped with a kitchen. Current Brandeis seniors living on campus are the only students exempt from this policy for the 2015-16 school year, which will fully set in when they graduate. With tuition prices rising steadily beyond the rate of inflation, forcing all residential students to purchase a meal plan is irresponsible and counterproductive.
Although it lost $25 in point value, the price of a standard 12-meal plan rose by $256 during the last year. The total cost of that plan, which is upwards of $6,000 per year, is just plain unfair. To make matters worse, everyone who lives on campus will be forced to pay for residence contracts (whose prices are also rising at alarming rates) and meal plans. To those who struggle to pay for tuition in the first place, mandating meal plan purchases for them brews a financial nightmare.
University tuition, which has risen to a tune of about $1,600 per year over the last two years, will reach $48,000 a year very soon, and this is without including housing contracts. To ask students living in kitchen-equipped residence halls to pay over $50,000 for services they may not want would not be right, and it may have the unexpected effect of driving students away.
Well aware of the insane hikes in costs of attendance, students fearful of being forced to pay thousands of dollars for something they will not want may transfer. Prospective students and transfer students may be scared away from the school. In the long-run, the decision to implement mandatory meal plans may end up costing the university in sheer student numbers. For the long-run well being of both students and the school, ending the policy of mandatory meal plans is in everyone’s best interest.
Students living in residence quads equipped with kitchens, including Ridgewood, Charles River and Foster, should be able to choose if they wish to live independently of university dining. Remember, those students in Foster and especially Charles River will need to trek to campus to use their mandatory meal plans. Living in such areas provides students with an important window of pseudo-independence during which they can learn to feed themselves what they want. They can pay less for store bought food and cook it on their own while fully utilizing the amenities of their residencies. Mandating meal plans completely robs these students of their pseudo-independence—either that, or they throw away thousands of dollars in dining hall food in addition to store-bought food.
If Brandeis wants to continue to raise prices in a fashion consistent with other schools, that would be reasonable. If it wants to force students without kitchens to have meal plans, so be it. It cannot, however, continue to make students break the bank for services that they may not want or need. The university needs to make meal plans voluntary for junior and senior residents of the Ridgewood, Charles River and Foster Residence Quads.
The consequences of keeping this policy may cost the university significantly in the long-run, whether it is through less students matriculating, more students transferring or more money simply being thrown away. Forcing students to pay for meal plans has already spawned backlash, and it will not bear positive fruit in the future. Brandeis policymakers need to sit down and ask themselves if these risks are really outweighed by the perceived benefits of mandatory meal plans.
