Highlighting Some Interesting Living Allowance Estimates

As a self-proclaimed higher education data nerd, I was thrilled to see the U.S. Department of Education release the first of the 2018-19 data via its Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) website. Among the new components released today was fresh data on tuition, fees, and other components of the total cost of attendance. After taking a little bit of time to update my datasets (a tip to users: investing in using the full data files instead of the point-and-click interface is well worth it), I’m surfacing with a look at some of the more interesting living allowance estimates for off-campus students.

Some quick details on why this is important: colleges are responsible for setting the cost of attendance (COA) for students, which includes estimated expenses for room and board, books and supplies, and other miscellaneous expenses like transportation and personal care. Students can access financial aid up to the COA, and the net price of attendance (a key accountability measure) is derived by subtracting grant aid from the COA. Colleges are thus caught in a bind between giving students access to the aid—often loans—they need to succeed while not looking too expensive or raising concerns about ‘overborrowing’ (which I am generally skeptical of at the undergraduate level).

Building on previous work that I did with Sara Goldrick-Rab of Temple University and Braden Hosch of Stony Brook University (here is a publicly-available version of our journal article), I pulled colleges’ reported on-campus and off-campus room and board estimates for the 2018-19 academic year.[1] To put this information in comparison, I also pulled in the average county-level nine-month rent for a two-bedroom apartment that is shared with a roommate. To make this fully comparable, I also added $1,800 for nine months to account for food; this amount falls between the USDA’s current cost estimates for their thrifty and low-cost food plans.

Here is a link to the data for all 3,403 colleges that reported off-campus room and board data for the 2018-19 academic year.[2] Below, I highlight some colleges on the high end and on the low end of the estimated living allowances.

Extremely low living allowances

Thirty colleges listed living allowances of $3,000 or below in the 2018-19 academic year. Given that food is approximately $1,800 for nine months, this leaves less than $150 per month for rent. Even in affordable parts of the country, this is essentially impossible. For example, Wilmington College in Ohio is in a reasonably affordable region with the price tag of sharing a two-bedroom apartment coming in at about $350 per month. But an off-campus allowance of $2,650 for nine months is insufficient to cover this and food. (The on-campus price tag is $9,925 for nine months, suggesting that price-sensitive students are probably looking to live off campus as much as possible.)

Extremely high living allowances

On the high end, 28 colleges checked in with nine-month living allowances above $19,000. Even for colleges in expensive areas, students could easily afford splitting a two-bedroom apartment and eating reasonably well with this allowance. For example, Pace University in New York has a room and board allowance of $19,774 for nine months while splitting a two-bedroom apartment and buying food checks in at $10,040. But if the student has a child and needs a two-bedroom apartment, this estimate is almost spot-on.

As a final note in this post, I would like to say that I frequently hear from colleges that I am using incorrect data for their institution in my analyses. My response to that is to remind them to make sure the data they provide to the U.S. Department of Education is correct. I do my best not to highlight colleges that had massive changes from year to year, as that could be a reporting error. But ultimately, it’s up to the college to get the data right until the federal government finally decides to audit a few colleges’ data each year as a quality assurance tool.

[1] This excludes colleges that report living allowances for the entire length of the program to allow for a consistent comparison across nine-month academic years. Additionally, room and board estimates are for students living off campus away from their families, as students living ‘at home’ do not have living allowance data in IPEDS.

[2] If a college requires all first-year students to live on campus, they may be missing from this dataset.

Author: Robert

I am a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville who studies higher education finance, accountability policies and practices, and student financial aid. All opinions expressed here are my own. View all posts by Robert