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In many public universities, the cost of room and board has risen faster than the cost of tuition.
Many public colleges have been “starved of state support,” forcing them to increase auxiliary costs.
Housing insecurity is among the most common factors driving people out of higher education.
The cost of room and board at many public universities is increasing faster than the rate of tuition, causing students to rack up deliriously high student loans and in some cases, leading them to drop out altogether.
Using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, Insider documented the reported tuition and room and board costs from ten public universities from 2012-2013 versus the 2022-2023 academic year. Using data from these ten public colleges, and not accounting for inflation, the estimated cost of room and board rose by 25 percent — faster than the rise in tuition costs, which rose approximately 22 percent over the same time frame.
The data matches a trend that the College Board found, which noted that between 2009 and around 2014, the cost of room and board rose by more than 20 percent.
A spiraling rise in college costs
Insider tracked the room and board growth at ten flagship state universities — the University of Texas at Austin, the University of California-Los Angeles, the University of Florida, the University of Virginia, Ohio State University, the University of Alabama, the University of Michigan, the University of Nevada, University of Wisconsin, and the University of Missouri — and found double-digit percentage increases in estimated room and board costs over the ten year period in nine of the ten schools.
This includes a 64% reported increase in estimated room and board costs at the University of Alabama, a 37% increase at the University of Virginia, and a 35% reported increase at the University of Wisconsin.
When presented with these findings, Sara Goldrick-Rab, a senior fellow at Education Northwest and the founder of The Hope Center, wasn’t surprised. The main reason for the large increase in room and board costs, she noted, is simple: It’s been very difficult for elected officials to substantively raise the cost of tuition — even when absolutely necessary — due to negative feedback from voters.
“So if they can’t raise money through tuition, then they raise money through auxiliaries. And that’s what room and board is,” Goldrick-Rab said.
In an interview with Insider, Mark Huelsman, the director of policy and advocacy at The Hope Center, echoed Goldrick-Rab.
“Public four-year universities in particular have raised room and board charges by a substantial amount above inflation,” Huelsman said, “And a decent amount of that, I think, has to do with just being starved of state support.”
In a statement, University of Wisconsin spokesperson Greg Bump told Insider that the school’s “Division of University Housing is a 100% self-funded auxiliary and does not receive taxpayer funds,” and that its room and board price increases “are necessary to keep pace with cost inflation, to provide funding for building maintenance and projects, and to provide student employees with fair wages.”
Additionally, Bump echoed Goldrick-Rab’s point, noting there’s been a tuition freeze at the university since 2013.
Paying more for room and board leads to more debt
As students are forced to pay even more for room and board, they’re often putting themselves into increasingly more debt. As a result, many students who have to take out interest-bearing loans to pay for increasingly expensive housing are effectively overcharged twice, once for the housing and once on that interest.
“The more that housing costs increase in a particular area or if room and board have increased substantially more than tuition, that’s just gonna end up meaning more debt for students at the end of the day,” Huelsman said.
The sticker price of tuition, room, and board, however, isn’t what it seems once interest is factored in. Using the public university data, Insider calculated what the average cost of education (room, board, and tuition) was for the 2012-2013 and 2022-2023 school years and ran it through a 10-year student loan calculator.
The average cost for a year of schooling, room, and board in 2012-13, according to Insider’s calculation, was $20,110. Over ten years and a six percent interest rate, that amounts to an additional $6,681 in interest that the student would have had to pay off. Ten years later, in the 2022-23 school year, the average cost of a year of education was $24,817. Using the same calculation, the student would have to pay an additional $8,245 in interest.
This means that the substantial increases to room and board over the last ten years, along with moderate raises in tuition, have led students to need to pay, on average, an additional $1,564 in interest.
Additionally, some public universities require their freshman students to live in student housing, making it difficult for low-income students and students who are parents to find an adequate home on campus.
The effects of housing insecurity on students
Among the many factors driving students out of college, housing insecurity is near the top, according to Justin C. Ortagus, the associate professor of higher education administration & policy at the University of Florida and the director of the Institute of Higher Education.
Ortagus’ 2020 research report found that living expenses was one of the top two reasons high-performing students dropped out of community college, just barely lagging behind the cost of tuition and fees.
“These financial challenges are repeatedly tripping up students and forcing them to leave college even though they were performing well academically,” Ortagus said.
Goldrick-Rab spoke similarly about the role that housing insecurity plays in students’ ability to make it through college.
“Of all the things that you could put into a model that would predict people not making it through [college], housing insecurity is right up there with having horrendous grades, for example. So you can go from being an “A” student who looks like they have everything together, but if you’re housing insecure, the odds are pretty good, you’re not gonna finish.”
Representatives from the University of Alabama and the University of Virginia did not respond to Insider’s request for comment.