Hacker News Reader

Comment by eganist | Hacker News Reader

Detail lost in the headline: Room & Board are not included.

What I foresee as a result: schools hiking Room & Board charges because "people can afford it." This step would've been far more effective if the state covered everything and price-locked it as a result; now schools will see the balance not paid by students on tuition as room for Room & Board charges to grow.

View on HN

This is true. But also, in New York City at least, it will still be an opportunity for those who live in the city to attend college locally while still living at home.

It's important to note too that, for CUNY at least, free tuition isn't a new policy, but rather a reversion to the state of affairs prior to the 70s NYC budget woes (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_University_of_New_York#Ac...).

at least for room and board you aren't required to actually atay at the university, most people I knew lived off-campus

That can easily change. Tons of universities require students to live n years on campus.

Are there any public universities that require this?

I went to a public university that required students to live on campus until their junior year.

Where?

Louisiana.

http://www.uno.edu/housing/residency-requirement.aspx

Other schools in system have a similar policy.

https://www.virginia.edu/housing/faq.php

> All First Year students are required to live in on-Grounds

http://housing.vt.edu/contracts/apply/first_year_students.ht...

> All incoming first-year students are guaranteed, and required to live in, on-campus housing for their first year;

And that's just Virginia.

Ohio State requires it for two years and it's about as big and public as you can get.

UMass Amherst required it of freshmen and sophomores when I was there in 2007-2011.

Weird. What practical purpose does this serve?

Do we know what lead to this policy becoming commonplace?

As an on-campus student I didn't know any off-campus students except one who went to my high school, and he didn't have many new friends from university that he kept in touch with. It is difficult to overestimate the social aspect of universities, which has led in part to other changes such as a common core curriculum for all undergraduates, for instance.

I'm not claiming that students should live on campus, but there are clear advantages if they do so to both those students and other on-campus students.

In theory, the argument is that it creates initialisation conditions of greater social and academic engagement that increases the likelihood of staying in college and completing a degree. The idea is that clueless freshmen who have never lived independently before and are unleashed for the first time will just get lost to the party if you set them loose off campus. This way they are given some structure and discipline during their first year or two in college, ideally creating a healthier template they more likely to adhere to in some measure even after they move off-campus.

Practically, it's more likely just a revenue measure...

Yes, but living off-campus isn't free either. That may get one out of hiked room/board/meal plan fees, but not out of the basic obstacle of affordability that stops many low-income people from going to college. Total cost of attendance can be prohibitive with or without tuition.

Yeah, there are more ways around it. One can work part-time. But my experience is that this is all a bit mythologised and represents a kind of superhuman best-case scenario.

Admittedly, I'm biased as a native Russian (in US since early childhood). In our part of the world, making school and university-age children work is still often regarded as a kind of violation of their human rights. "They need to learn financial responsibility" doesn't resonate strongly in cultures without this national folklore of individual self-reliance.

However, as far as I can tell, "working through college" isn't as easy as it's made out to be. In the real world, a good chunk of the kids that have to work enough alongside school to actually _support_ themselves (housing, food, necessities), rather than just earn some discretionary "spending money", don't end up doing well in school, for obvious reasons of nonlinear tradeoffs in human activities. After a 6-hour shift on my feet at the pizza joint, I'm probably going to want to come home and veg, not soar to the snow-capped summits of my survey of Western intellectual history until 2 AM ...

Being in tech, I got so engrossed in my work I dropped out to pursue my (at the time) meteorically ascendant career! :-) But that's a different — and decidedly luxurious — problem.

I suspect this could happen due to market forces as well. Now students in other states simply need to move to NY to establish residency in order to qualify. Most likely they would move to the area near their college campus of choice, driving up rents there.

There's more money in real estate.

The state owns much of the real estate around campuses across the state.

Give away the content, make your money back on rent and living fees.

Similar to their StartUP NY program which offers income tax relief in exchange for leasing state owned office space.

Good point. Some of the SUNY schools do require students to live on campus, although I think most students in NY could either live in off-campus apartments (which tend to be cheaper) or with their parents if they're local.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com