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It was easy to laugh when President Trump served the Clemson University football team a fast-food buffet at the White House. The sight of McDonald’s fries, cheeseburgers and sauce packets piled high beneath Abraham Lincoln’s portrait led to days of jokes on late night shows, Twitter and beyond.
“I would think that’s their favorite food,” Mr. Trump said.
The spread was a strange choice for the setting, but the president wasn’t completely wrong about how college students eat. A 2015 study found that more than 70 percent of college students surveyed ate fast food at least once a day. Another survey found that 45 percent of adults ages 20 to 39 eat fast food or pizza on any given day.
A number of factors could explain this high rate of fast food consumption by college kids. For some of us, it’s the first time we are free to decide what we’re going to eat. We also tend to stay up late, and fast food is available in large quantities at all hours of the day and night.
But there’s another, more obvious explanation: College students eat fast food because it’s right in front of them, served on campus by their schools.
I go to the University of Oklahoma, so let’s use that as an example. The school operates 30 places to eat on campus, including nine chain restaurants like Starbucks and Quiznos. To me, the chains seem to drum up more excitement than their independent counterparts.
The vendor I visit most often is the Chick-fil-A in the student union, where I pick up breakfast two or three times a week. My routine continued when I commuted to an internship this summer and ate breakfast at a stand-alone Chick-fil-A instead.
It’s clear to see how Chick-fil-A benefits from the habit I picked up at school. “Restaurants targeting college campuses makes a lot of sense because, basically, you have this bubble that most students live in, right?” said Sam Oches, who has written about campus dining for QSR, a food service trade magazine. “It’s a very captivated audience. They’re going to build a loyalty to your brand in college that they can carry on to the rest of their lives.”
Mr. Oches added that schools often benefit financially from keeping students on campus, instead of letting them buy food elsewhere. He said schools “don’t really want the students to go to town. Spending their money on campus is a lot better for the university.”
Following that logic, I assumed chains might also save universities money. Brands gain loyal customers by having locations on college campuses, so I thought they could be paying schools for this access.
I thought wrong. After franchise fees and other costs, branded restaurants are 7 to 10 percent more expensive for my university to operate than generic ones, according to Dave Annis, the associate vice president and director of housing and food services at Oklahoma.
He also said it’s worth it.
“Ten, 15 years ago, food service wasn’t even in the top 10 reasons you would pick a university,” Mr. Annis said. “Current studies show food services are in the top three reasons a student picks a university. Having a competitive food service helps us recruit.”
Grand Canyon University, a private Christian school in Phoenix, helps demonstrate the correlation between amenities like broad dining options and recruiting. Over the past several years, the school has increased its offering of brand-name restaurants on campus relative to non-franchise options. The school has also seen huge gains in enrollment in that span, from under 1,000 students on campus in 2009 to just over 20,000 in 2018.
“There’s always that balance in school, trying to figure out where you’re going to eat,” said Gwen Massett, who graduated from Grand Canyon University in December with a degree in digital film. “It really comes down to making the time to cook or buy food. Realistically, though, a lot of students end up eating at Chick-fil-A, Subway or Taco Bell.”
There are no franchises on campus at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Ark. The school is much smaller than Oklahoma and Grand Canyon, with just under 2,000 students on campus. “The licensing costs and royalty fees, infrastructure costs and supply chain logistics can make it cost-prohibitive with limited enrollment,” Christine Blaha, the school’s food service director, wrote in an email.
Students at John Brown want to see a franchise on campus anyway.
“That’s an idea we’ve been lobbying for, and by ‘lobbying for,’ I mean complaining about,” said Owen Terexia, a freshman political science major at John Brown. “If there was something like a Chick-fil-A you could use your meal plan on, people wouldn’t hesitate to do that.”
When Oklahoma students complained that they wanted healthier options and more variety in their dining options, Mr. Addis and his team gave the student body four new dining options to choose from. Ultimately, students voted for Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers, choosing taste over nutrition.
Mr. Addis said Cane’s has been popular with students, “which leads us always to question, when the students ask for something: Do we give them what they say they want, or what they really want?”
This, it seems, is the central issue: Schools aren’t choosing to install franchise restaurants on their own, but because students have asked for them.
Like pulling all-nighters in the library or complaining about too little parking, the worst of my fast food habit will probably be a college pastime I’ll leave behind after I graduate in May. Until then, I’ll be happy to keep having Chick-fil-A for breakfast.
What We’re Reading
Elite Law Firm’s All-White Partner Class Stirs Debate on Diversity Paul, Weiss is more diverse at its top ranks than most of its peers. But its recent promotions underscored how far big firms have to go to elevate women and people of color.
Freshman in College, Freshman in the Capitol: West Virginia’s 19-Year-Old Lawmaker Caleb Hanna, one of the youngest state legislators in the country, is a black man raised in a white family who represents a predominantly white district in West Virginia.
A Tiny Screw Shows Why iPhones Won’t Be ‘Assembled in U.S.A.’ Apple decided several years ago to produce a high-end Mac in Texas. The problems that surfaced illustrate the challenges of domestic manufacturing.
When College Rapists Graduate If they’re not held accountable at school, what’s to stop them from becoming the villain of another woman’s #MeToo story once they enter the work force?
Duke University Apologizes Over Professor’s Email Asking Chinese Students to Speak English The university is conducting an internal review after a professor sent an email cautioning international students from speaking Chinese on campus.
A Frat Boy and a Gentleman One researcher found that fraternities were embracing “a more inclusive form of masculinity,” based on equality for gay men, respect for women, racial parity and emotional intimacy.
Let’s Figure It Out
Hannah sent us a problem to figure out this week:
I’m in my freshman year of college at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. At the beginning of my first semester, I joined a varsity team in a sport I had performed well at in high school and declared my major in a STEM field that I was curious enough about. With the first semester of college down, I can safely say that I excelled in both. I feel really bored in each place as well as my university at large, where despite being part of the honors college and getting to know a lot of people around me, I still find that I’m at the top of my classes and have trouble finding people who are as passionate about academics as I am. As I look to the next semester, I find that I want to quit my sport, change my major, and transfer — all in search of topics, activities, people and places that inspire and excite me in ways that my current surroundings lack.
By exceeding where I am, I’ll prepare myself with skills that will benefit me later on: be it my sport’s work ethic and physical fitness, the critical thinking involved in my major, or a G.P.A. that might be higher than it could be at another school.
Is it better to try to find places where I might be happier (and more excited) or to stay where it’s clear that I’ll be able to be ok? And should I try to modify my current situation in order to try to challenge myself more so that I at least stay engaged in what I’m doing vs. zoning out because things are too easy?
Theo Balcomb, the managing producer of The Daily, weighed in on this one:
I was right there with you midway through my first year. I can hear in your letter the care and time that you’ve put into this decision. I mean, my goodness, visiting colleges, getting into one, choosing your home for the next four years in the midst of saying goodbye to your childhood one is hard enough.
Now you’re thinking about reversing all those decisions, and you’re looking over an abyss of more unknown. Acknowledging all that, let me say: You are doing the work that so many people don’t do.
You are questioning whether you’re in the right place. Lots of people do that. You are worrying that your choices won’t lead you to where you want to be and won’t make you happy in the meantime. Lots of people do that. But you are thinking about a new way forward. You are putting yourself out there and jumping into something new. Lots of people don’t do that. I think they’re usually unhappier for it.
I can’t say exactly what will happen if you choose to apply to transfer. I can’t say that you’ll get into another school that you’ll like. I can’t say that you will, and then you’ll go, and once you’re there you won’t think about all the things you missed by making that choice. I can say that I felt many of the absences you’re feeling. Being in a place I thought I wanted that wasn’t quite right, being afraid to accept that I made the wrong choice, being angry that I was surrounded by people who didn’t want to read books as much as I did.
I think you can’t ignore those feelings too long. I ended up making my choice to apply to transfer because I needed to just try to see if there was another option. I had been burned by the college search once before. I hadn’t gotten into my dream school the first go around. I had settled and I thought it might be fine to settle for so many similar reasons that you cite: the honors program, the friends you’ve already made, your grades.
I think you should consider putting those things aside for right now. Try looking at other options. Feel out how it might feel to be you a year from now on one of those campuses. Apply. If you think you need to have a sure bet of getting out, apply to a reach and a not-so-reach. Going through that will solidify, I think, your feelings on where you are. You might hunker down on the things you do like about your current situation. Or you might start living a bunch of new fantasy lives in your head that you’d rather live out. That’s how you’ll know if you need to jump or not.
I hope no matter what happens, you find a group of people as passionate about academics as you are. Knowing how much thought you’re putting into this decision, I know you can find that where you are or wherever you might go.
P. S. Just saying, transferring to Barnard College, which is famous for accepting a high number of transfer students, turned out to be the best decision I ever made.
Navigating college and the years afterward can be tough, but we’re here to help! Maybe you’re wondering how to choose a major, or the best time to study abroad. Perhaps you’re out of school and figuring out how to budget. Send us an email at theedit@nytimes.com with the subject line, “Figure It Out.”
