EL PASO, Texas — If there’s anything about college most can agree on, it’s that it is very expensive.
Although steadily rising tuition is alarming, experts say other costs, like room and board, are also getting out of hand.
“Thank God I live with my family so I don’t have to pay for that. But I hear my friends complain about this, they say it’s about $600 a month, plus the tuition, they’re barely making that much working for a living so I don’t know how they’ll survive like that,” said UTEP student Jad Aboud.
College Board, an organization that advocates for higher education, found that in the past five years, room and board charges have risen nearly 10 percent above inflation.
“I consider myself lucky because I was a teaching assistant when I studied so I was able to decrease certain fees from out-of-state to in-state; but still it was a lot for me,” said UTEP alumni Mahmoud Khailil.
NPR reports that high room and board expenses are leaving some students paying about $24 a day for food on the cheapest meal plan. That’s twice what the government says the average American spends per day on food.