Today, the Daily Nebraskan news section wrote about the money students lose by underusing their unlimited meal plans. We feel dining services should offer better and more intelligent choices for students that, at the end of the day, don't waste our money.
The main problem with the current option is that the plans offered are unlimited, which means the plan is optimal for students who would eat at least three meals a day and might even double up on meals some days. But the truth is, with busy schedules, limited appetites and operating hours, people are never going to be able to sit down for that many meals.
To this point, we suggest that dining services reconsider the availability of service. Even if extended hours mean a much more limited selection of food, it would allow students to make the service – which they paid for – fit into their schedule instead of the other way around.
Along with that, there is no real alternative to the unlimited meal plan; there's a five-day and a seven-day plan, and the price difference is negligible. Even if a student knows that she or he will be consistently skipping a meal, she or he can't recoup the difference because the plan forces everyone into the wasteful unlimited plan.
Additionally, we have found, personally, that a missed dining hall meal means we'll end up paying for a meal from one of the restaurants near campus, which means we end up paying for two meals.
The only alternative, which the Daily Nebraskan reports is much cheaper, is for students to buy each meal as they go along. This, of course, is a difficult proposition for students and their parents to take.
Instead, we encourage dining services to offer a new set of meal plans that are more cognizant of the various lifestyles and schedules of students. Sure there might be a place for the unlimited plan among students, but it should be supplemented with different money-saving options.
A few of the meal plans offered by other Big 12 colleges provide a good model for us to follow.
The University of Missouri, specifically, offers a tiered meal plan that is based on a set number of meals a week. It ranges from seven meals to 21 meal plans, five different plans in all.
We feel that a plan of this kind would be the most effective because it would be flexible to the students and require them to think more closely about what meals they are and aren't eating. Not only does this sort of plan allow us to save money, but it allows students to find a greater level of responsibility with their money – and isn't learning to handle greater responsibility what college is all about?
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