It will cost more to live and eat at UK next year. Find out how much.
It will cost University of Kentucky students more to live and eat on campus next year.
Under a proposal approved by the UK Board of Trustees at a Tuesday meeting, housing and dining rates will increase on average 3 percent starting next fall.
UK has raised its housing and dining rates every year since at least 2016. The state’s largest university doesn’t typically announce if there will be tuition increases until late spring, closer to when it finalizes its budget for the next fiscal year.
Annual housing and dining cost increases have been built into UK’s budget ever since it hired two private companies to build and operate those services on campus. Greystar, formerly known as Education Realty Trust, has built about $500 million in new dorms since 2012, and its contract included yearly rate increases. That’s also true for Aramark, which took over UK’s dining operations in 2014.
The amount of the housing rate increase depends on whether the university built the housing or if it was built by Greystar, according to a written release.
All Greystar-constructed buildings will see a 3 percent increase. A two-person suite will go from $3,750 to $3,863 per semester. Greek housing will also see a 3 percent increase under the proposed plan.
Some university-constructed housing will see a 2 percent increase for graduate and apartment housing.
In addition, the university requires students who live in dorms to purchase a meal plan. Aramark offers four dining plans. The minimum plan, 10 meals per week, will cost $1,630 per semester starting in 2020, an increase of a about 3.5 percent from the current per semester rate of $1,575.
The All Access Blue meal plan will go from $2,035 per semester to $2,100 next fall. That’s a 3.2 percent increase.
The housing and dining rate hikes come nearly 12 months after the release of a January 2019 UK survey found 43 percent of 2,000 students interviewed said they had experienced food insecurity, with nearly half of those reporting actual hunger because they couldn’t afford to buy food.
UK has said it has tried to increase the amount of aid to students to cover housing and dining costs including a program called UK LEADS, which gives students grants to help unmet financial needs, among other initiatives.
In a written release announcing the dining and room and board increases, UK said when Aramark took over in 2014, UK’s six existing meal plans were reduced by as much as 26 percent. Since that time, the annual increases in fees have been based on inflation but have not exceeded 4 percent, the university said.
University officials also said dining rate increases were steeper— around 4 percent — when UK ran food services in the two years prior to Aramark taking over the contract. Since 2014, Aramark’s average increase has been 2.7 percent. It’s highest increase was in 2017, when rates were raised 4 percent.
The university is also in talks with Greystar on a new dorm on its campus on the 14 acres that Kirwan-Blanding complex currently sits on. Also during Tuesday’s meeting, the board of trustees approved a series of resolutions that will allow for the demolition of that 11-building complex, which opened in 1967-68. The total cost for demolition is $15 million. In additional $5 million will be needed to turn part of that area into a green commons-like area that the university has called UK Green. The demolition is expected to start early next year.
A price tag for the new, 500-bed dorm has not been announced. UK officials have said that new dorm likely won’t be open until the fall of 2022.
This story was originally published December 10, 2019 at 12:11 PM with the headline "It will cost more to live and eat at UK next year. Find out how much.."
