Dorms
Living in the dorms is great fun. You can almost always find someone to hang out with. You do not have to worry about food. Also, since it is run by the school and not some evil company, it must be affordable, right?
According to the Student Housing website, if you were to purchase the smallest meal plan which includes 90 meals and get a room by yourself it will cost $11,678.58 a year. Let’s pretend they charge $10 a meal (they like keeping the cost of meals ambiguous), and since you purchase 90 meals a quarter, you would spend $2,700 the entire year on food (if you do not take any summer session classes). When you subtract $2,700 from the total cost of a room by yourself, you get $8,978.58. Divide that by nine (you do not get your room for the whole year and you are not even allowed in there during breaks) for the number of months you get your room and you get $997.62 dollars a month. In Davis, that much money a month will get you a single bedroom apartment with your own bathroom, kitchen, and living room and you will still have money left over to pay for the internet (maybe not the electricity though). But you get your own bathroom!
Since Davis apartments seem to only have yearly contracts, we can try dividing $8,978.58 by twelve (even though you could still technically sublet or use your apartment when you are not allowed to use the dorms). This comes to about $748.22 a month. This will get you a large bedroom with your own bathroom if you search through Craig’s List. Maybe the school does not like you being anti-social and is just trying to make it more appealing to live with one or two other people? Logically, if you were to divide these costs by two or three, it is not that bad, right?
For some reason, even though the rooms are not that much greater in size, you pay only about a thousand dollars less a year in a double-occupancy than you would in a single-occupancy. The smallest meal plan while sharing a room with one other person costs $10,582.65 a year. Sharing a room with two other people costs $9,382.23 a year. If we go through the same math again, you are paying $875.85 a month to share a room with another person. Sharing a room with two other people? Then you pay $742.47 a month. These prices will get you your own bedroom and bath at an apartment complex (provided that you find people to occupy other rooms).
Apartment complexes charge about half of what the school does for better rooms, yet they somehow manage to make a profit. This seems quite questionable since the university is supposed to provide an affordable education. Maybe someone is taking advantage of the monopoly on freshmen? Maybe there is some inefficiency somewhere? Whatever the reason, the students are the ones who are punished.