By Emily Ferro –
As college students in America, many have recognized that college costs are rising, and as a college degree becomes increasingly more necessary for many careers, students are forced to live with the price tag put on education.
With an average cost increase of 3% every year, Salve Regina University has recently announced a change in the costs for room and board in order to help ease any financial stress students might be under.
Media Credit: Emily Ferro - Crunching numbers on the housing plan.
On Tuesday, Jan. 24, a presentation explaining the new cost plans was given by William Hall, the Chief Financial Officer at Salve Regina.
It is no secret that the housing on Salve Regina’s campus is out of the ordinary. Beginning in students’ sophomore year, many of the housing options offer rooms that are either in historical buildings or apartment style layouts.
With the new changes to the room and board plans, Salve Regina will be implementing scaled housing cost, depending on which type of housing a student chooses to live in.
Up until this decision was made, all housing on campus cost the same amount, with just a little bit of variance in costs based on which meal plan was chosen. As a sophomore, junior, or senior, there was the option to limit the choice of meal plan to either 19 meals per week, 14 meals per week, or to opt out of the meal plan completely.
Media Credit: Emily Ferro - Nethercliffe, one of the houses which will see a cost increase in the coming year.
With the upcoming changes, there will be more pricing options, many of which appear to work in the students’ benefit. While pricing has changed for sophomore housing as well, the recent meeting was geared towards the juniors and seniors of next year, who have the most potential to experience change in their cost of living.
Most juniors and seniors find themselves in apartments such as Nethercliffe, Fairlawn, or one of the five available houses around campus, like the ones available on Victoria Ave. Each type of housing (freshman, sophomore, apartments, and houses) will cost slightly more than the type of housing below it.
This scaling of costs has raised a few concerns among the student population. Freshman Chris Lehrbach feels that the different price tags on housing bring up issues of a person’s wealth. He believes that economic standing should not affect any student’s decision of housing on campus.
“I believe pricing certain upper class housing higher, which benefits more economically advantaged students, is contrary to the Catholic mission of the University,” Lehrbach said.
According to Hall, this was not a concern that was overlooked during the planning stages of these changes. The new changes allow for many different options for available housing and the preferred cost. Hall cited an example of a student who wished to live in a house, but the higher costs made it unaffordable for their budget. As a suggestion, Hall told the student that they could request to live in sophomore housing, such as Hedges, which houses less than 20 students.
By requesting sophomore housing, the student would get the experience of living in a house, while paying the reduced price of sophomore housing, therefore saving more money than they would have spent without the new prices.
While the scaled cost of housing sparked a few voices of objection, a majority of the concern was placed on the new meal plan options for upperclassmen. With these changes in funding, the meal plan options for juniors and seniors have been rearranged, eliminating the option to opt out of the meal plan entirely as an upperclassman.
The new meal plan requires all on-campus students to sign up for a minimum of seven meals per week. There are also the options of 11, 14, and unlimited meals per week. The logic behind this change, according to Hall, is that giving students at least one meal every day would “give parents peace of mind.”
Hall suggests that the numbers don’t lie, and out of the 180 on-campus upperclassmen, only 29 opted out of the meal plan entirely. A majority of the students who did sign up for a meal plan did not even choose the lowest available meals per week, but chose the 19 meals per week option.
Not everyone is happy about the change, and sophomore Lizzie Mozer is certainly one of the ones who are discontent. “I think it’s outrageous that we don’t have a right to choose our meal plan.” Her largest concern is that students will no longer be able to opt out of the meal plan altogether, stating, “I don’t know what harm it would do.”
In Hall’s eyes, these changes do not take options away from students; they give the students more to choose from. “We wanted to empower the kids with choice,” he said.
Nothing expresses the changes quite like the cost comparison provided at the meeting on Jan. 24. Projected costs of room and board for the 2012-2013 school year had the cost changes not been implemented were projected to be a minimum of $10,900 if a student chose to opt out of the meal plan entirely. With these new changes, if a student wanted the minimum of seven meals per week and lived in an apartment, room and board costs will be $11,500. With an increase of $600 and $300 “Seahawk bucks” added to the students’ cards, costs increased by the equivalent of $300.
While Lehrbach was not a fan of the changing in housing, this meal plan was one he could get behind. “The seven meal plan next year will be cheaper for me than opting out entirely,” he said.
If the $300 was broken down, a student with the seven meals per week would be spending approximately $8.80 per week to receive one meal per day, as well as $300 to spend in Miley Mart, Global, or Original Burger.
According to Hall, while these changes may be new for students here at Salve Regina, they are nothing new to the world of academia. “It’s what other schools do,” he said. Schools such as Roger Williams University and Providence College have similar systems. With the new changes at Salve, the cost of room and board here will come to less than that of either Roger Williams or Providence.
With changes come proponents and opponents alike. For more information, to ask questions, or raise concerns, contact Gerry Willis, Director of Residential Life or Joe Lomastro, Associate Director of Residential Life.
