After you swallow hard and write that first big tuition check, and the one for room and board, and the blank check to the college bookstore, your progeny proudly sets foot on campus, fully prepared.
He or she just needs one more thing. Money.
What for? How about an odd-looking haircut, an annoyingly oversized sweatshirt and a few loads of laundry?
In short, walking-around money. But how much?
About $55 per week is a baseline figure.
According to Orlo Austin, director of financial aid at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, $1,712 lets a student scrimp by for an academic year.
Nothing like a nice, round number. “It’s probably one we came up with to make sure the other big numbers come out even,” Austin says.
College administrators refer to these funds as “miscellaneous,” a technical term derived from Latin for “to mix,” but which might as well mean “cash stuck in the hands of an 18-year-old to blow however he or she sees fit.”
Still, it would be wrong to think administrators are cavalier about calculating the miscellaneous figure. To participate in federal financial aid packages, colleges and universities are required to regularly survey students to find out what it costs to live for a week or a month on campus.
At Drake University in Des Moines, John Parker, assistant vice president for business and finance, has managed to arrive at a round number: $1,800. Two years ago it was $1,600.
At the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Brian Wilk, assistant director of admissions, weighs in with $1,745.
Most schools operate on a 32-week academic year, so these three schools are forecasting a miscellaneous need for the aforementioned $55 per week.
“This is a reasonable and modest budget,” says Austin. “If a student comes in with little support from home, and we’re providing him with this amount (of spending money) through financial aid, we understand it will be difficult (to make ends meet). For a student who can supplement (with savings) from a good summer job or who can get a little help from home, it should be quite adequate.”
Adequate or not, where does the money go?
Betsy Carmody of Birmingham, Ala., who attends Northwestern University and last school year served as managing editor of the Daily Northwestern, takes less than a minute to add her weekly expenses. Counting out loud (“$25 for Friday night, $25 for Saturday night–no, make it $20 a night . . .”), she quickly arrives at $70 a week.
“Don’t forget laundry,” Carmody says. She budgets $10 per week. Some students also have a garment or two that needs to be dry-cleaned, she says.
A car is a budget-buster, she says. Besides the gas, insurance and maintenance, most campuses have parking fees. “At Northwestern, figure $30 to $60 per month,” she says.
If it costs more to spend a week on campus than it used to, says Wilk, you can blame part of it on technology. “VCRs necessitate video rentals,” he says.
“If you’ve got the microwave and the room refrigerator,” says Parker, agreeing wholeheartedly, “you’re going to put something in it.” In no way, the administrators say, does the ability to prepare food in the dorm room 24 hours a day compromise the college student’s principal inalienable right to order pizza at midnight.
Nearly all dorm rooms have phones, Wilk says, with a small charge for local calls. “Some of the students run up big long-distance bills calling friends at other colleges,” he says.
One thing your college student won’t have to pay for, however, is a computer access fee. Rather than jacking up your America Online bill, they’ll access the Internet free through the college’s computer system. At Drake, there is a Macintosh in every dorm room at no extra charge.
Entertainment, such as concerts, won’t cost your Bradley student nearly as much as your Loyola student. “Since we’re so close to Chicago, concerts are a money-suck,” says Northwestern student Carmody. “Every weekend there is a good show here. Once you’re in the door, there’s the pull of a T-shirt or something.”
Clothing is a line item. You’d be happy if they spent some of that allowance on a hat and gloves; instead they will buy oversized $40 sweatshirts with the school logo.
Sorority and fraternity members will have additional opportunities, besides dues, to throw in for date parties or off-campus galas celebrating special occasions such as October or November. Including dinner, T-shirts, a fee for the band and a commemorative photograph, an off-campus Greek party can run $100.
College is not all books and beer. Like Carmody, many students work part time for an hourly wage. At Drake, about a third of the full-time student body participates in the federally subsidized work-study program. Students dish out peas, check in library books, mop floors, troubleshoot at the computer center and run the student newspaper for rates beginning at minimum wage, $4.65 per hour. Checks are theirs to do with as they see fit, though Parker sees an increasing number of students turning them in against tuition and room and board, rather than cashing them for spending money.
None of the colleges where administrators were interviewed include travel in the miscellaneous category, but they all say it can be the biggest fringe expense.
Carmody receives a monthly allowance from her parents, which is deposited directly into her checking account. She warns against turning freshmen loose with ATM cards. “I didn’t know I had overdraft protection my freshman year,” she says. “As long as it kept giving me money, I kept taking it out and I ran into a problem.”
She also cautions against credit cards. “They drop the slips right into your bag when you buy books,” she says, “and the cards are easy to get. They seem to know that if kids run up bills they can’t pay, their parents will bail them out.”
Learning good financial habits their first year or two in school will help later on when students move off campus and are dealing with more expenses they pay for directly, such as rent, groceries and utilities.
Once freshmen have been at school a couple of weeks, talking with them about how much money they need and what it’s for is a good idea, says Wisconsin’s Wilk. “You think you know what the average student needs, but in 20 years here I have yet to meet the average student.”
