Being an exchange student at Elon has been an exciting experience personally. The four months I spent at Elon has given me a glimpse of an American college life, which is vastly different from the Singaporean university system that I am so used to. Everything is markedly a new experience for me: living in a college town, subscribing to a meal plan system, small class sizes, fantastic facilities on campus, with almost nothing to complain about here.
From my personal interaction with Americans students here, I came to realize how fortunate I was to be an exchange student at a private college in the U.S. For one, my tuition for this semester is waived due to a reciprocal agreement between our schools. Most of my peers either have to hunt for scholarships, which are hard to come by, or simply take out hefty loans to foot the $24,000-a-year tuition fee. On top of that, there’s also room and board to take care of, adding another $6,000 to $8,000 to the heavy burden of a college education.
Before I came, I was advised by seniors who have previously gone on American exchange programs about the relatively expensive room and board that we would have to pay for. Since the exchange program covered only the tuition fees, room and board were still our responsibility, and hence becoming a major consideration for our choice of program.
When I first got to Elon, we were told to purchase the 9-meal per week plan, which costs about $1,500 for the semester. Due to some hiccups by the bursar’s office, two friends and myself were billed and given the 5-meal plan instead. When we approached the bursar’s office to correct the mistake and top up for the difference, we were advised to keep the 5-meal plan. I made some brief calculations there and then, and decidedly kept the 5-meal plan instead, chiefly because the abundant meal dollars would feed my coffee addict.
A little bit of background on Elon’s dining services here. Elon’s dining services is largely taken care by Aramark, a national food and apparel service partner serving organizations across several sectors. A quick check on the internet revealed that Aramark operates campus dining for many colleges across the country, including University of West Georgia, University of California Irvine and East Stroudsburg University. At Elon, Aramark operates three dining halls and eight other food and beverages outlets. Meal plans and meal dollars can be used at all locations.
As the semester went on, I had on several occasions talked to some fellow exchange students about the meal plan system. Most of us didn’t have such a system at home, and thus we became critical of this system and did some math on the value of the meals. To our horror, we realized that the bulk of Elon students were paying more than what they were getting.
I have posted my research and calculations in Appendix A. Calculations were based on the door values of meals posted by Aramark at the dining halls ($5.58 for breakfast; $7.58 for lunch, dinner and weekend brunch), and the assumption that a student receives meals only for 32 weeks a year (14 in fall, 4 in winter and 14 in spring). A total value given by the meal plan counts and the meal dollars is made, including tax, to simulate the total cost that a student pay if he or she uses cash for all dining purposes on campus.
From the table, one can see that a student loses money as long as they purchase a meal plan. And in addition to that, the lower number of meals per week a student purchase, the more money they lose on the meal plan. For example, a student will only lose $44.38 on a 19-meal plan in a year, but if he so chooses a 9-meal plan, he or she loses over $1,200 in a year. The only exception to this trend is the 5-meal plan, where a student loses only $392, due to the high amount of meal dollars bundled with the plan.
In addition, meal combos are offered at retail locations such as the Octagon Café, Downstairs McEwen and Acorn Coffee Shop, which often works out to be far lesser than the $7.58 value posted for a meal plan count. Hence, if a student on a meal plan so chooses to use his or her meal plan at a retail location, it just translates to losing more money on the meal plan.
What baffled me when I was reading the FAQ section on the campus dining website was the cash equivalency scheme offered in lieu of meal plans. Each meal plan, valued at $7.58 (which is the price charged for cash payment at the dining hall locations), is worth only $2.50 in cash equivalency if the meal plan was used at retail locations on campus instead. The explanation given was that $7.58 paid for a dining hall meal consisted of two parts: a food cost of $2.50, and a labor cost of $5.08. Since students ‘save’ the dining halls of the food cost when they do not consume their meals at a dining hall, this $2.50 is refunded to them. However, the labor cost cannot be refunded as Aramark workers at the dining halls work as usual. It is also interesting to note that anyone who pays for the meal plan in cash, will have to pay for this labor cost as well, even though it has been paid in advance (at least in theory) by students who have purchased a meal plan at the beginning of the semester.
Let’s paint a possible scenario. Suppose 2,000 students were projected to dine at the dining halls on a given day, but only 1,700 turn up and swipe meal plans on it, Aramark loses food cost for 300 people, but still earns labor costs associated for serving 2,000 students. Fair enough since they have projected 2,000 diners based on previous data, and made ample labor and food preparations to cater to all.
However, what if an additional 300 off-campus diners come in and pay for their meals in cash? That means that Aramark stands to earn an additional 300 units of labor costs ($5.08 per person), when they effectively serve a grand total of only 2,000 people for that day, which is the initial projection.
In summary, it is all right for Aramark to collect more labor costs, but not less, even though the amount of work may work out to be the same.
One may counter this idealistic calculation by posing an opposite scenario of ‘bad days’ when the turn-out at the dining halls severely fall short of the projected figures. Since Aramark states that the food cost is only worth $2.50, it still doesn’t validate charging cash-paying customers three times this food cost to make up for wastage made by students who fail to turn up to consume meal plans. Labor costs shouldn’t be a consideration at this point in time, since it has already been paid for at the beginning of the semester when all students purchase their meal plans. Furthermore, students who consume food at other campus retail outlets would have to pay full value of their food purchased – food and labor – meaning that labor cost is actually paid twice over when they choose to use a meal plan at a retail outlet instead.
Speaking of wastage, I wonder what does Aramark do with the surplus food they have at the dining halls each day. With the dining halls closing at 8 p.m. each evening, there have been a few instances that my friends and I visit the Colonnades dining hall at 7 p.m. or slightly later, and have our dinner till closing time. Even at 8 p.m. when no new customers are allowed to come in, there are still trays of entrée that are more than half full. And this only what is visible to the patrons, we do not know what else is left behind the oven and refrigerator doors. And at the end of the day, what happens to all the excess food? I have no idea.
It can only be deduced that the surplus of food in the dining halls is a result of poor planning and projection by Aramark. Projections and data analyses are part of any food & beverage to minimize wastage, which translate to cutting costs. Aramark is not new to Elon – it signed it first contract with Elon in 1960 – and thus it should have a bulk of historical data to use for projection. Moreover, Elon have had its events calendar made known to Aramark so that necessary adjustments in the amount of rations could be made.
So what should Aramark do about this? First and foremost Aramark, or Elon, should give an explanation for the inflated price of the meal plans, when it is clear that they cost more than what they really are. The purpose of students purchasing meal plans is to enable students to save money by purchasing meals on campus in bulk at the beginning of the semester, and not end up paying more for meals. Even if there are additional costs that students should bear, they are not made accessible and easily explainable to students as well. As customers of the campus dining services, students have a right to know what exactly are they paying for, and hiding behind the façade of a lump sum that students (or their parents) pay blindly each semester just shows irresponsibility of a corporation, which should be accountable to their paying customers.
While it is arguable that the door value of the dining hall meals are far lower as compared to some other colleges around the country, it still does not qualify the inflated charge of the meal plans. What Aramark should do is to reconcile the costs of the meal plans paid by cash-paying customers at the door and the actual cost borne by the students under the meal plan system.
Aramark should also consider removing the $2.50 cash equivalency of the meal plans. The sole purpose I see in the $2.50 equivalency is that I have found many students with a surplus of meal plan counts left over at the last few weeks of the semester. So as to exploit and make full use of what they have paid for, they resort to expediting meal plans by using them as a $2.50 credit to purchase items which they may not necessarily need, since they will not be able to obtain a refund for unused meal plans.
While the combos offered at the various retail outlets are good alternatives to the dining hall options, the cash equivalency offers little or no purpose in complimenting the scheme. Students are allotted meal dollars bundled with their meal plans, for use at campus retail values. Also, students may make use of the debit account on their Phoenix Card to make purchases if they have depleted their meal dollars, saving them the tax they have to pay on a cash payment. Unlike some other colleges, there is no minimum deposit required for the Phoenix Cash account on their Phoenix Card. University of California Irvine places a minimum of $25 deposit on its campus dining debit account, and UNC Chapel Hill places that minimum at $50, just to name a few. So if a student wants to buy a $1.49 coffee without paying that extra 10 cents in tax, they can simply top up $1.49 on their Phoenix Cash account and use that to buy a coffee at Acorn.
As you can see, the cash equivalency offered by the meal plans is a weak alternative to the other arms of the scheme. The only plausible reason for the offer of the cash equivalency is due to the excessive amount of meal plan counts students have left at the end of the semester, and they desperately try to use up the meal plans by splurging on things they may not necessarily need.
There is another part of the meal plan scheme that is questionable, that is the rollover concept from term to term within a year. The existing policy allows a student to keep his remaining meal plan counts if he chooses to upgrade his meal plan from term to term. However, if he or she downgrades his plan, the remaining meal plan counts will be erased. This policy is totally counter-intuitive. If a student have had surplus of meal plans in the previous term, would he need to upgrade his meal plan? No. Instead, he may even want to downgrade his meal plan, and make use of his remaining meal plan counts as well (after all, he paid for them). In short, if a student has chosen a higher-than-necessary meal plan at the beginning of the school year, either downgrading or staying on the same plan will both be to their disadvantage.
At the end of the day, the primary purpose of college dining services is ultimately to provide affordable and healthy dining options to college students. While the self-funding nature of private colleges may be a valid consideration for the high costs at the end of the day, the onus is still on them to find the balance between being a socially responsible education institute and a profit-driven private business. College education costs have been a major consideration for many American families for years, and tens of thousands of college students graduate each year with debts of up to $100,000 to their name even before they earn their first paycheck as a graduate. Ultimately, private colleges should hold themselves to the core mission of education – to make it available to as many people as possible. And to do so, the most fundamental step is to always keep focus on the mission and to watch the cost to keep away unnecessary burdens for the students.
Appendix A: (click to enlarge)
