Recently, a large apartment building was proposed for Dinkytown (evergreen lede) on the half block where the McDonald’s and liquor store currently sit. As such, I saw the standard complaints about l*x*ry apartments.

Which made me want to write down something I’ve been thinking about constantly since living on campus at the University of Minnesota in 2008.

Here goes: seems like the crappy (they're fine) dorms at the U are a way worse value than all the new apartments everyone complains about?

The data? We've got some data. Check out how much it costs to live on campus! Back in the day, I lived in Territorial Hall, which unfortunately appears to now have its own university-sanctioned hashtag. For fall 2019, a semester in Territorial Hall costs $3,139 American dollars.

Gotta break that down...so you get to live there from the last week of August until a few days before Christmas. That's 17 weeks. That comes out to about...$738 a month.

That’s to split a 189 square foot room with another person, with communal toilets and showers down the hall. They kick you out over Christmas and shortly after finals in May. And it’s not like the summer is all losses—they use some dorms for summer housing and rent some out for sports camps and things like that.