60% increase in Food+Housing at Virginia Tech in 3-4 years.
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Anonymous
UNSWR ranks VT ahead of W&M |
Anonymous
And for some stuff it is. 1. Engineering and related fields like CS (as W&M has no engineering school) 2. Other criteria that USNWR has decided are imporyant simply because they correlate with being a very large school. |
Anonymous
I can't find the information any longer, but they were striking loudly outside the dorms starting at 5AM every morning the last weeks of the semester an finals week, with drums, recorded bullhorn messages, air horns, bells, etc. It made for a really difficult finals week as all but one of the dining halls became cold food/grab and go only, and the kids could not study or sleep, so there was a lot of discussion on the parents groups. I recall the company offering a generous increase, but the employees wanted something much higher. For some reason $25/hour is stuck in my mind, plus a bunch of benefits, but I could be mistaken. It is a national food service company, the same one that does several Virginia universities. I don't know what they settled on for the contract, but my kid did not mention strikes for spring finals, so perhaps the negotiations are finished. If they got what they wanted, and VT uses the same company, I am not surprised that food went up. |
Anonymous
Sorry, that number was all in, dorm plus meal plan. I think it was around $6000.00 per semester. |
Anonymous
The conpany is Compass. This is what the company offered. I can't find what the union wanted, but it was much more than the company offered. "...negotiations between Compass and UNITE HERE Local 1 recently, the union did not vote on Compass’s most recent contract offer, which includes a 16% raise for associates, a back pay bonus, $7 per hour raises over the duration of the contract, 13 paid holidays, 10 paid sick days and an 80% increase in pension contributions..." This is for the food service workers. If the cafeteria workers got more than this, I am sure dorm food contracts will increase everywhere. |
Anonymous
DP. FIFY. |
Anonymous
New criteria gives 11% to Pell-Grant related criteria. An additional 5% also is based off of criteria related to those getting federal loans. If you are a recipient then yes it's an importnaCitt area to consider in picking a school, but if you are not then it's not particularly relevant to how good the school is. Scoring of 6 year (!!) graduation rates based on whether they exceed expectations or not is 10%. Personally my goal for my kid is to graduate in 4 years - 5 TOPS. And it's a black and white question of whether they do or don't - giving plus points for doing better than expected at this generous timeline largely overlaps with the low-income factors addressed in the Pell Grant criteria. Citatons and publications - typically higher for big universities that use lots of grad students to actually deal with undergrads rather than having the bulk of that fall to professors themselves - count for 4% SAT scores on the other hand count for only 5%. It's a ridiculous scoring system that is not actually focused on the quality of the school at this point. I'm not saying Tech is a bad school. It has a great engineering school. And the rest of it is a good solid mid-tier education level. But it is not on par with UVA and W&M for anything outside the engineering school. |
Anonymous
You're certainly entitled to your opinion, even if you're sadly mistaken. It's an excellent school - and not just for engineering. |
Anonymous
| VT is like luxury living and food compared to when I went there. It’s like a country club at colleges these days. |
Anonymous
That is significant. What is it for UVA, JMU, W&M, etc.? |
Anonymous
Here you go, increases over 3-4 years at UVA, JMU, W&M. UVA 17% 
JMU 13% 
W&M 18% 
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Anonymous
If this data is correct, VT went from least expensive to most expensive among these four in a short period of time. |
Anonymous
Lol,.this is true of the food, but many of the dorms are exactly the same |
Anonymous
| VT is solidly Big 3 |
Anonymous
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