The Evolution of University Dining Plans

(Historical information from Food Management Magazine, October 1997.)

Until the last quarter of this century, American universities required that all students living on-campus purchase the school’s one and only dining plan, typically a boardplan for 19 or 21 meals every week (depending on the number of meals served on Saturday and Sunday). The university cafeteria served three meals a day at set times, with set menus. If students were busy during mealtime or didn’t like what was being served that day, no other options were available.

However, in the late 1960’s and 1970’s, with a surge in student populations, technological developments, and students’ increasing demands that universities provide more diverse food options and greater student choice in campus dining, universities began to offer a wider variety of menus, longer serving hours and the addition of smaller boardplans (10 meals/week, 15 meals/week, etc.). These smaller boardplans offered students greater flexibility in on-campus dining. However, the development of truly flexible dining plans, based on amount spent rather than number of meals eaten, was stymied by the amount of paperwork that would have been involved in tracking students’ use of their meal plans.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s, with the advent of computers in dining services, universities were finally able to develop genuinely flexible student dining plans. Most notably, universities were able to largely move from the "meals per week" system to a declining balance, or debit dining account (known at Duke as food points or dining points), allowing students significantly more freedom in how they spend their dining dollars over the course of a semester.

For a more in-depth History of University Dining Services

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