[A Closer Look]: Food and fuel bite into student budget
By Melinda Dudley
April 10, 2006 9:00 p.m.
UCLA students’ high cost of living is not only reflected
in the price of rent, but in many of their local purchases ““
from gas to groceries to morning lattes.
Los Angeles ties with Chicago as the second most expensive city
in the U.S., outranked only by New York, according to the 2005
Economist Intelligence Unit’s worldwide cost of living
survey.
High costs in Westwood are visible to consumers, especially in
the form of gas prices: Westwood consumers currently pay 12 cents
more per gallon than the citywide average price and more than 30
cents more than the national average, according to AAA’s
Daily Fuel Gauge Report.
The Chevron at the corner of Le Conte and Gayley avenues, the
only gas station in the immediately vicinity of UCLA, is always
more expensive than other stations in the area, said Hrayr
Khanjian, a third-year linguistics student.
While complaints about parking on campus are nothing new for
UCLA, students increasingly report that off-campus apartment
complexes are charging students for parking privileges, especially
those with secure garages.
“Now you get your apartment, you’ve got to apply for
parking, and you have to pay for it,” said David Duong, a
third-year economics student.
“They’re trying to milk students for all
they’ve got,” he said.
Because the blocks closest to campus are zoned for two-hour
parking and finding a spot to park longer is often difficult,
students say they do not have much of an alternative to paying
their complex’s parking fees.
Some students said saving money on essentials necessitates
shopping out of the immediate area.
“The only (place) that seems absurdly expensive to me is
Westwood itself,” said Paula Fong, a fourth-year linguistics
student.
Fong chose to mitigate living costs by living in Santa Monica,
where rents are far cheaper than Westwood Village. She also shops
at Vons, which has cheaper prices than Ralphs or Trader
Joe’s, where many UCLA students do their grocery shopping,
she said.
UCLA’s financial aid office estimates that an
undergraduate student who lives off campus should budget $9,000 for
room and board for the 2005-2006 academic year, which amounts to
$750 per month for rent, food and utilities.
While most students agreed that it was possible to live on
$9,000 for room and board, many students are paying a lot more.
“It depends on what kind of standard of living you
want,” Fong said.
The UC determines cost-of-attendance figures for each type of
student ““ on-campus, off-campus and commuter ““ for each
campus with the help of two surveys.
The Student Expenses and Resources Survey is completed every
three years by California, and measures student-reported costs at
the UCs, California State Universities and community colleges.
In addition, the UC conducts its own cost-of-attendance survey
every three years.
The UC uses average expense findings from the two surveys to
determine official student expense budgets used to determine
financial aid, according to Matt Yurdin, principal research analyst
in the office of student financial support at the UC Office of the
President.
For undergraduate students living off campus, only UC
Berkeley’s estimated room and board budget came in higher
than UCLA’s, at $9,064.
Cost of living at UC Riverside is by far the cheapest, where the
estimated cost of living off campus is only $7,000.
