Read almost any news story about the price of college, and it will no doubt start with a heart‐wrenching tale of some student who works approximately 3,000 hours a week, takes six classes, and has no idea how he’ll afford to pay tuition. Such human‐interest hooks are great for grabbing readers’ attention, and certainly there are some students who struggle to pay for college. The problem is, these ubiquitous tales of woe have convinced many Americans that constant, on‐the‐edge subsistence is the plight of most college students, and that only copious amounts of taxpayer‐financed aid — which itself helps drive rampant tuition inflation — can save them.
And then there is the other side of the story: all the money spent by college kids not on the basics, but creature comforts and extravagances that if he were transported to the present day would make yesteryear’s college student choke on his cafeteria mystery meat. From today’s Inside Higher Ed:
As she did her usual move‐in day sweep of residence halls, Kathy B. Hobgood, director of residence life at Clemson University, noticed students in a dozen or so rooms unpacking their flat‐screen televisions items that until recently might have been spotted in a campus café but certainly not in a dorm.
Up and down the halls, people piled their electronic gadgets on top of storage cubes and dishware, leaving behind a monumental trail of cardboard and packing foam.
“The volume of stuff is alarming,” says Hobgood, who is publications coordinator for the Association of College and University Housing Officers International. “This pile of boxes … you wouldn’t believe.”
Housing directors all over — and not just in places that tend to attract wealthy students — are reporting an increase in the number of belongings students bring with them to college. Carloads, they say, are becoming the norm.
Of course, one might say that tales of flat‐screen TV’s and designer dorm furniture are as anecdotal as starving student stories. And one might be right. Some data in the Inside Higher Ed article, however — and in the survey linked to within — strongly suggests that student luxury is far from restricted to a few Richie Riches:
Back to college has become big business. According to an annual survey from the National Retail Federation, students and their parents are spending $5.43 billion this season on dorm and apartment furnishings, up from $3.82 billion a year ago. The survey shows that they will spend a combined average of $956.93 per student on back‐to‐college merchandise, up from last year’s $880.52.
According to the data, it certainly seems that a large number of college kids aren’t struggling just to survive. Indeed, it seems many aren’t wanting for anything at all.
Perhaps, though, hard statistics aren’t enough for you. Here, then, is one more heart‐wrencher to help kill the starving student myth. It’s the Princeton Review’s vaunted — and infamous — list of the nation’s top‐20 party schools, which, with one exception, contains all state — meaning directly taxpayer subsidized — universities.
Party on, “starving” students!