Being forced to buy a meal plan and live on campus at a university makes sense to accustoming students to the college life style.

What doesn't make sense are the exorbitant prices that are tagged along with it. If you do the math, my current atrocious dorm room comes out to more than the price of an apartment just off campus. So why? When all of society continues to go on and on about student loans, are colleges doing this?

Even if you accept everything the college tells you about college meal plans and housing helping development, there is no way to financially justify it.

At North Carolina State we are fortunate enough to have decent value meal plan, but for the same price many universities take advantage of students being forced to buy into the meal plan.

While all of this is to motivate a profit based incentive, I reasonably believe that if a university forces its students to buy a meal plan than they must provide equal value.

If meal plans weren't required then of-course the university could charge whatever price it wanted for the added convenience of being able to get meals at an easy access. The simple competition of students turning to alternative food methods would keep the prices low. But forcing students to buy a meal plan bypasses most of that competition.

As college becomes more of a necessity than a choice it is paramount for there to be increased access to that education. And getting rid of crazy first year fees are one way to do just that.

There is no reason for a college to attempt to turn a profit on dorm buildings from the 70s, it's time to make college a reasonable experience. And scams are anything but reasonable.