Just a few weeks before the start of the fall semester, those Yeshiva University students who managed to stay on top of their school-related emails might have been surprised to find an email from Bruce Jacobs, Director of Dining Services, announcing some startling new changes to the undergraduate dining plan . Some students were no doubt pleasantly surprised to find that a version of last year’s pilot ‘flexible dollars’ plan, wherein students could redirect a portion of their dining plan funds for use in local restaurants, would be continuing and that two new restaurants – Grandma’s Pizza uptown and Bravo’s Pizza in midtown – had joined the lineup.
This year, as Jacobs explains in the email, YU undergraduates will be offered the option of paying $1550 a semester – a $50 increase from last year – for the Basic Plan, with $50 of those dollars designated as flex dollars. For those who wish to have more ‘flexibility,’ the new Premium Plan allows students pay an additional $150 a semester for the privilege of using $250 at the participating restaurants. Those students who choose to upgrade to the Premium Plan would be able to use a total of $500 on their caf cards in the restaurants throughout the academic year, paying a cumulative $3400 (as opposed to the baseline $3100) for the meal plan.
The success of last year’s pilot program encouraged its continuation this year, although with several important changes. During the fall 2011 semester, students were initially given $100 from the funds already on their caf card to help test the program. Only a few weeks in, many students were complaining that they had already exhausted the $100; so, Jacobs explains, the university generously allotted an additional $150 during the fall semester and a final $100 during the spring semester. Thus, during the course of the past year, students were given $350 of their prepaid dining funds for use at off-campus restaurants. This semester, $50 of the $1550 per semester – or a total of $100 per year – will be designated as flex dollars for students signed up for the Basic Plan.
When asked about the changes, Jacobs remarked that while the students were thrilled with the new initiative last year, “Food Services ran a deficit of $750,000 last year,” channeling these funds instead to the participating restaurants. “Take the $350 per student and multiply it times the number of students on the meal plan,” Jacobs calculates, clarifying that “Yeshiva University cannot afford to lose $750,000 on a program like this every year.” Jacobs adds that most universities working with Blackboard, the company that coordinates YU’s meal plan, do not offer equally generous deals.
Believe it or not, Jacobs challenges, Yeshiva University offers one of the cheapest dining plans relative to every other university in the United States. At Columbia University – where the meal options are comparable to those offered at YU – dining plan prices range per semester from $1975 to $2295, with an additional 10% tacked on for those participating in the kosher meal plan. Columbia also provides a flex dollar account for students to use at either off-campus or on-campus establishments, but does not allow any of the money in this account to come from the prepaid plan, so that the students must add any additional funds separately. At both Tulane University – where the per-semester meal plan as of last year was $2375 – and Pace University – where students paid between $1795 to $1995 per semester during the 2011-2012 year – only $25 from the prepaid funds is designated for use off campus.
It would not be “feasible,” according to Jacobs, for YU to allocate more than the relatively generous $50 per semester for off-campus establishments without charging a premium. To do that, Jacobs asserts, the university would have to lay off food service employees and even cut into the budget of other services. The $3000 a year that each student on the meal plan pays supports not only food preparation and purchase, but the salaries and benefit of food service employees, equipment maintenance, kosher supervision, and extended hours of operation. Designating more of the prepaid funds as flex dollars, as Jacob explains, would mean cutbacks– anything from curtailment of hours to serving fewer meals on weekends
One accounting major at Syms who wished to remain anonymous questioned the new Premium Plan, insisting that a “cost-benefit analysis” of the initiative did not seem to yield any particular advantage for students. For many, the email was confusing, and Jacobs admits that the message “wasn’t communicated as well as it should have been” and that he’s been flooded with phone calls “off the hook” to clarify the options. YC junior Ari Shachter jokes that “only people in Rav Schachter’s shiur would be able to understand the email straight off the bat,” adding that he doubts “too many people will be willing to tie up 150 dollars in order to gain the option of transferring 50 more dollars from one kitchen to another.”
While students have questioned the advantage of prepaying when they could pay out of pocket as they go along, Jacobs notes that dollars on the caf card are tax-free, maintaining also that students are paying for convenience. Rather than carrying cash or using a credit card – making it harder for students to monitor what they’re spending and often resulting in over-spending – students will be able to rely on the caf card and keep a record of their funds. One obvious advantage of the plan, it seems, lies with the participating restaurants. “Their business has skyrocketed,” Jacobs notes, contending that “if the kosher [food] business is successful, all it is good for the Jewish community.”
The Jewish community at large might benefit then, but it remains to be seen how many of the smaller YU student body believes they will do the same by opting for the Premium Plan. The initiative seems to be rather generous when compared with programs offered by other universities and both Jacobs and the YU administration is optimistic that many students will hop on the bandwagon.