Community Colleges Eliminate Friday Classes to Help Students Cut Gas Costs

Student Loan Girl — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:54:00 GMT

Several two-year schools with large numbers of commuter students have reduced the length of their academic week from five days to four in an effort to reduce their students’ commute and help them save money on gas.

Making class sessions longer, these schools have been able to cancel classes one day a week, mostly opting for Fridays. This move has allowed their students, who are typically low-income and often work part-time jobs or support families while going to school, to eliminate one round-trip drive out of their weekly schedules.

Meridian Community College in Mississippi recently decided to extend its four-day week — already planned for the summer schedule — into the fall semester as well, according to a story in Inside Higher Ed (“Dropping a Day to Save on Gas,” May 19, 2008).

MCC president Scott Elliot told Inside Higher Ed that 90 percent of Meridian’s students drive themselves to class, and over half of those students commute an average of 30 miles round trip. By his initial estimates, based on earlier gas prices, which have continued to rise, these students will save at least $200 a semester on gas under the new class schedule.

The school plans to try the four-day-week schedule for at least one academic year before evaluating its effectiveness with focus groups and surveys.

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As Food Prices Rise, Cost of Campus Meal Plans Going Up

Student Loan Girl — Sat, 10 May 2008 01:05:00 GMT

College students may see a sharp spike in the cost of their on-campus meal plans this fall, due to rising food prices, according to a story this week in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Soaring Food Prices Have Campus Dining Halls Squeezed,” May 6, 2008).

Several schools have already announced that they intend to increase their meal-plan prices next year, and it’s likely that many more schools will follow:

• Louisiana State University	7.0% increase
• Clemson University	6.0% increase
• University of Miami	4.5% increase
• Ohio University	3.5% increase

In an attempt to avoid huge deficits and stay within their budgets, college food-service operations across the country are getting creative with their meal plans and coming up with unique solutions to contain their costs.

Louisiana State University, for instance, will focus on reducing the portions of its meals.

At Ohio University, the school will focus on marketing meal plans to off-campus students in an attempt to increase overall revenue. In addition, food-service staff will be baking items like cookies, pizza dough, and rolls, from scratch, instead of using premade products.

Rich Neumann, director of dining services at OU, estimates that baking from scratch will save the school almost $100,000 each year alone.

One of the simpler, if more manipulative methods is the one implemented by Western Washington University for one week last month. The school simply removed trays from the dining halls so that students couldn’t carry as much food.

The strategy worked.

According to the director of WWU’s dining services, the dining halls saw a 34-percent reduction in waste when the institution went trayless.

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Student Loan Blog : prices

Community Colleges Eliminate Friday Classes to Help Students Cut Gas Costs

As Food Prices Rise, Cost of Campus Meal Plans Going Up