Although Ohio State’s standard residence-hall and meal-plan rates are average in the Big Ten in comparison to other large public universities in Ohio, students can expect increases in room and board rates in the future as the university adds additional residence halls.
OSU has 32 undergraduate residence halls, which are home to about 8,700 students. That figure includes traditional residence halls and scholar housing. Among the halls, 60 percent – or 5,200 students – live in double-occupancy rooms. Four percent live in single occupancy rooms, 13 percent live in triples and 23 percent live in quads.
Other OSU campus housing includes two undergraduate apartment buildings housing 288 students, one graduate hall housing 470 students, one graduate apartment building housing 135 students and Buckeye Village, the student family housing complex, which houses 380 students and their families.
The rates have increased over the past years, with last year’s increase from $3,498 to $3,654.
“Rate increases are needed annually to cover operating cost inflation, building and equipment renewal and major renovation and construction,” said Bill Schwartz, associate vice president for student affairs.
Some renovations are not seen by students, which causes some to be frustrated when they see fees rise yearly.
“Sometimes students see changes because it’s new furniture or new carpeting, but sometimes they can’t because it’s new plumbing or a new roof,” Schwartz said.
These costs will continue to increase annually as additional renovations are in the works, he said.
“We do have an extensive capital plan for the residence and dining halls. It includes a significant amount of infrastructure work for the residence halls like fire alarm upgrades, electric upgrades, chiller replacements and bathroom reconfigurations,” said Molly Ranz Calhoun, director of facilities for Student Affairs.
Ranz Calhoun said OSU, which annually puts large amounts of money into renovations and planning, will spend about $5.5 million for these renovations over the next four years.
“We spend approximately $4-7 million each year on projects ranging from lobby renovations to electric upgrades and roof replacements,” Ranz Calhoun said. “We have a staff of seven people (such as) interior designers, architects and engineers.”
There are several buildings to be renovated into residence halls.
“In the past few years, we have had to increase density in some of the residence halls to meet the demands for housing,” Ranz Calhoun said. “This means that we have had to make some rooms triples and quads that we would have wanted to keep as doubles.”
The university is finding buildings to turn into residence halls to accommodate the additional beds needed to return to double rooms.
The second through fourth floors of the Archer House, home of OSU’s human resources department, will be converted into residence halls. The change will take place because the human resources department will move to the Gateway project building in August.
“The Archer House conversion is targeted for 2006 and will yield about 110 new beds in a double occupancy room configuration,” Schwartz said.
Lincoln Tower will revert to being all residence halls. However, it is still unknown where the offices in Lincoln Tower will be moved to.
“As soon as there is agreement on that issue, we will start the renovation of Lincoln floors four-to-fourteen to return them to residence halls,” Ranz Calhoun said.
The Fawcett Center is the last building that could be converted to a residence hall. If this renovation does occur, it will cost between $4 and $6 million. Renovations of floors three to 10 of this 10-story building would hold 108 dorm rooms and provide housing for 240 students. However, the first floor will continue to be dedicated to university conferences, a restaurant and banquet facility.
The food service buildings will be renovated as well.
“That upgrade will take us the next 10 years to implement over all three food operations,” Ranz Calhoun said.
A standard double dorm room in Big Ten colleges and other public universities in Ohio includes extra-long twin beds, a wastebasket, some type of closet, overhead lighting, smoke detector, desks, chairs and high speed Internet connections. However, unlike universities such as Michigan State, Purdue and Miami of Ohio, OSU students have the privilege of having a microfridge unit in their room at no additional cost.
“Having a microfridge makes it more attractive to live on campus,” said Toni Greenslade, director of housing and food services.
Even though OSU has a microfridge unit and the standard double room with the standard meal plan – the Gray Plus plan – this does not make campus living any more expensive to students than other universities. OSU is fifth in the Big Ten in terms of cost for room and board, and third-cheapest in the state of Ohio.
OSU does not, however, offer carpet with its standard dorm rooms. Bowling Green and Northwestern both include it in their standard packages.
“There are a lot of students that have allergies to things that can get into carpet and we would have to make sure it is changed every year,” Greenslade said. “It also enables students to decorate as they want.”
The best deal overall for standard double rooms and the cheapest meal plan from the 2004-05 academic school year in the Big Ten is at the University of Wisconsin at $5,361 a year. The perks of the rooms at Wisconsin include a microfridge and a telephone; some universities do not provide a phone and some only have phone jacks. The worst deal in the Big Ten is the University of Minnesota, which costs $6,218 a year and does not include a telephone, microfridge and – like OSU – no carpet.
Throughout Ohio, select public universities have their perks and faults as well. The best deal in Ohio is at OSU, costing $6,354 per year with all the previously-noted perks. The worst deal is the University of Cincinnati at $7,305 a year, where rooms do not have a microfridge or carpet, but do have telephones.
There are about 8,000 undergraduate students and 800 other students who use OSU’s meal plan. About 13,000 meals are used on weekdays. October’s meal usage totaled 341,456, including weekends, Schwartz said.
“Part of the meal plan pricing is based on absenteeism,” Greenslade said. “You are paying less than it really costs.”
OSU’s meal plan allows for multiple “swipes” to be used during the same meal period, a change implemented in 2002.
“It’s a relatively new development that not many schools are doing because it’s costly to the university,” Schwartz said. “We wanted to make it so students can get closer to using all of their allotted meals.”
Schwartz said the old meal plan left about 30-35 percent of meals unused by students.
“This has dropped into the 15 percent range with the new quarterly meal plans and shows signs of going even lower as we have added the ability of students to use 10 percent of swipes for their guests,” Schwartz said.
Having an additional $100 deposited onto a students BuckID is an option that has only been available for the last eight years.
“This came about from the requests of students and the desire for the university to allow more flexibility in meal plans,” Greenslade said.
She said this was also done to move more toward a cashless campus for safety purposes. OSU also offers an increased number of locations that accept the meal plan.
“We have greatly expanded the number of outlets that accept the board plan, including campus restaurants and the Campus Grind locations,” Schwartz said.
