Dining at the University of Kentucky: For the Students or the Money?

The dining hall(s) a school offers is an often overlooked part of the college experience. When searching for possible places a student may want to attend, the dining hall and meal plans the school offers may not always be the most important aspect parents and their kids look at. This is fair as things such as education, majors offered, tuition cost, housing cost, location, and more easily trump the dining aspect.
But as some experts have stated, dining halls can have a significant impact on students in their education and even in their social lives. Especially with college students already forming bad eating habits because of outside sources, it is important to have a place where they don’t just consume healthy food, but also learn about the impact of their diet. College dining has been seen to be an often overlooked part of students lives, but it is crucial to have an established dining scene on campus.
The University of Kentucky has taken notice of the importance of the dining options on campus, spending upwards and above 70 million dollars on dining services across the campus as recently as 2014. This leads to the current layout the school has set up for students, staff, and the general public. Two large dining halls that allow for unlimited buffet-style eating, accompanied by a variety of chain restaurants throughout campus such as Papa Johns, Subway, Panda Express, and more. With plenty of options no matter where you are, it surely seems that almost anyone will be able to find something they like.
The two dining halls at the University of Kentucky as mentioned above are commonly referred to as “Champions Kitchen”, and “The 90”. For students, meal plans can be purchased that are either unlimited or offers 10 meals a week at the dining halls, depending on what you decide on. Both dining halls have a large variety of options for all types of eaters.
At a brief glance, this layout seems spectacular. Anyone can get their quick fix of fast food when needed, hop into the dining halls for a quick meal, or even stop by more local places. The options span far and wide and can keep you trying something new every day. The school really seems to care and have put a lot of effort into providing great dining experiences for anyone.
But as with almost anything in life, it’s going to come with a cost. A pretty hefty one at that. The aforementioned unlimited meal plan spans from $2,035-$2,140 a semester. With quick math, that means you would be looking to pay $4,070–$4,280 a year. This price again only pays for your access into the dining halls and a small amount of “flex dollars” ($250–$400) to spend on other campus dining places. This also means that once you run out of flex dollars or dine at places that don’t take flex dollars, you will have to pay seperetaly for it. Yikes. . .

Coming from a large university the plans available may not seem all that awful price wise compared to competition. But where the University of Kentucky seems to lack is the options in meal plans. For the Fall of 2019, the University offered either 10 Meal Swipes per week at $1,575 a semester or unlimited Meal Swipe plans that again ranged from $2,035-$2,140. The difference between 10 meals a week and unlimited is huge, putting many uninformed freshman and newcomers in a bind on whether 10 meals per week is enough or if they should shell out the extra money and get unlimited.
An example of this is Kentucky student Jackson Post who is a freshman at the University. I interviewed him, asking just a few questions. From this I learned that he has a version of the unlimited plan that gives him unlimited meal swipes and 250 dollars of flex dollars. He also told me that on average he visits the dining halls around 10 times per week. He paid $2,035 for this semester for this plan. If you were to assume the flex dollars are essentially money off you’d get $1,785 a semester for unlimited access to the dining halls. With him going about 10 times a week and about 18 weeks he has access to this plan, this means he is paying on average about $9.92 for each entry. As a college student who is always trying to save money, you could definitely eat for less and save money.
Some may argue that Jackson could have bought the 10 swipes a week plan and save money, but again this goes back to the difference between 10 swipes a week and unlimited. He had no idea how many times a week he would be going since he had not experienced his daily life yet as a college student. The limited options of 10 swipes per week and unlimited swipes only made it harder on him since he either had to choose to cut it close or go all out with an unlimited plan.
While other universities could also struggle with this undecided meal plan problem, at least they have more options for students to decide between. If you were to compare this to a relatively close university in the University of Arkansas, you would see that the options are greater. There are six different on-campus meal plans that include 7, 10, 15, and unlimited meals per week. This makes finding the right meal plan for you much easier than compared to the University of Kentucky.
A similar example to further stress this point is the options at the University of Iowa. Iowa seems to have both Arkansas and Kentucky beat as far pricing goes. An unlimited plan at the University of Iowa costs $1,890 per semester, which is significantly cheaper than the University of Kentucky. Even better, University of Iowa’s cheaper plan gives on average 9 meal swipes a week with unused swipes from one week carrying over to the next week. This plan costs $1,705 per semester.

Another larger over-looking question also comes into play when examining just exactly how the dining at the University of Kentucky works. Who is this exactly all for? I know, the obvious answer you may say right away would be the students. And surely all of these renovations and additions to campus dining does benefit the students, but what other motives could this be for?
One answer could be directly for the university. While the university may not directly make money off of said dining halls and meal plans, it may help their cause in drawing in more students. While taking students on tours, the university walks students through the large open space of “The 90”, and “Champions Kitchen” making sure to point out how brilliant and amazing they are. But rarely ever are the students informed of the high costs that come with having access to the dining halls. I would know since I was on these same tours a little over a year ago.
With drawing in more students by use of these facilities, this now allows the University of Kentucky to generate more money from things such as housing, sporting events, tuition and more. And although it is a public school and they do not profit from this, the school could just use this as leverage to receive more funds from the government. Also, other outside sources would be more likely to invest with intent to make money such as Aramark, the company who provides food services to the University and even funded the 32 million dollar construction of “The 90”. This can lead to a slippery slope of whether the University is doing great big renovations and innovations for the students or to just get more investor money for research and other non-student related programs.
Of course someone could take the other side of this argument saying if it benefits the students in the end, it shouldn’t be a problem. But you must keep in mind that this is not possible without charging the students unnecessarily large amounts of money to have access to these dining services. All of this blurs the line between the discussion on whether the main group that benefits from all of these campus dining renovations are the students or the University.
While the expensive facilities and dining options are nice to have, the rising costs of attending college overall makes it to where these expenses are unnecessary. Although far too late, a reduction in costs to renovate and produce the quality of food may just have left students with a lighter bill and a similar overall satisfaction level with the dining choices on campus.
The University of Kentucky truly does offer high quality dining experiences across campus for the students and staff who need to access it in their daily lives. The high costs and limited choice when it comes to meal plans does lower the overall value of the options although, and it does raise the question on whether or not it is all necessary. The answer to who does all of this benefit more, the students or the University, may just depend on who you are asking.
