Now that the 2015-2016 school year at Eastern Michigan University (EMU) has come to an end, the students who lived on-campus throughout the year have packed their bags and gone home, and will not return until fall. What those students living on-campus may not know is that if they found residence away from campus they could be saving over $1,000 per semester on food alone.

The dining services at EMU have seen a number of changes over the past few years: differences in times they are open, the merging of the Eastern Eateries with the Quick Fix below, and even an online ordering system that allows students to shorten the time it takes to get food. The one thing that has remained consistent, however, is an annual increase in the food prices. For the past six years, EMU dining services has seen an increase in price of 4 percent per year. Some students don’t think this increase is justified. “I feel like you’re still paying a lot for those meal plans, but you’re not getting much out of them,” said Keifer Walker, a student at EMU. This price increase is used to cover rising food costs, pay employees, and fund on-campus renovations among other things according to the director of EMU dining services, David Carroll said.

When compared to other food options, however, EMU always comes out to be more expensive by a large margin. According to information from the United States Department of Agriculture, if a student was to purchase their own food from the grocery store and cook it themselves, the entire semester would total a little over $1,200. This is in sharp contrast to the $2,345 cost of the Gold Meal Plan at EMU, which is the cheapest option for on-campus students. Even if a student ate fast food for each and every meal, they would still be spending about $500 less than if they bought a meal plan.

The differences between these options can, and has been explained away by the fact that EMU provides services beyond fast food and self-preparation. In order to get a better picture of the price points that EMU charges, they must be compared to similar services that can be found in other Michigan universities. Despite the fact that EMU is one of the cheapest schools in the state by tuition, when comparing meal plan costs EMU does not do so well. Eastern has the second most expensive meal plan price when compared to several well-known universities as shown by Figure 2, yet even this is not an accurate representation. By calculating the average cost of a meal when looking at meal plan prices, EMU does even worse. The gold plan, which gives students two meals per day, is ranked second when compared to other meal plans if the students in those universities also eat only two meals per day. But all three of the other schools allow for unlimited visits to food courts, so if those students take advantage of that and eat three meals per day, even MSU costs less per meal as shown in Figure 3.

What this means is that EMU students pay more for food than the students who attend other universities. In fact, students with meal plans even pay more than the commuters who eat on-campus. The average price of a combo at EMU is $7.90, more than $2 cheaper than the average cost of a meal for a student using a gold meal-plan. Some students have no choice but to have a meal plan, however. Dining rules stipulate that if you live in the residence halls, you must have a meal plan. If you live in the village or in Brown and Munson apartments, or any of the apartments that are considered housing, you do not have to have a meal plan, the assistant director of dining services said.

Even with differences as large as this, students are still unaware of the price gaps. A large part of this may be due to the fact that most of them take out student loans in order to pay for their living costs rather than pay upfront. About 70 percent of students will graduate college with student loans, and many will think nothing of those loans until the time comes to start paying them off. The best way to save money, however, is to avoid the meal plans entirely.