As a soon-to-be graduate of Arkansas State University, I’ve come to appreciate how much A-State has become my home over the past three years. However, in my leaving, I want to present some ideas for practical changes that would make this campus even better: a grocery store on campus, merged dining dollars, lower prices for online classes and updated housing options.
Bring a true grocery store to campus
I know we already have the Northpark Quads store, but it’s too small and overpriced to be a real grocery store. A proper grocery store would be a huge help to our population of students without vehicles.
Earlier this year, I had to go without a car for two months. Fortunately, A-State had almost everything I needed already on campus; the biggest thing missing was a proper grocery store.
A grocery store on campus would also help the school save money by lessening the need to run a shuttle for international students to get to the store. It would be great for all students who would certainly appreciate the added convenience. If A-State does move forward with this plan, they should put it in the mostly vacant strip mall the school already owns, by the Subway on Johnson.
Merge Flex and Express Dollars to spur dining competition
Sodexo currently has an unfair hold on students because it requires us to purchase large meal plans to live in the dorms.
While I’ve seen Sodexo improve over the years, such as the updated hours for Chick-fil-A on Saturdays, the company would be forced to improve even more if it had to compete with local businesses.
A great way to do this would be to merge Flex and Express Dollars.
For those who don’t know, Express Dollars is a little-known program at A-State that works similarly to Flex, with the key difference being it works at select off-campus businesses. The main reason students don’t use it instead of Flex is that only Flex is included in meal plans.
The school could still retain the revenue it makes through its deal with Sodexo by the fees it would charge businesses to be on the updated Express Dollars network.
Equal pricing across online classes
As I have progressed further into my degree, fewer and fewer of my required classes have been offered in person, requiring me to instead take them online.
This has been quite disappointing for me, as I enjoy how tightly knit the creative media production program is, as well as having the ability to network with people in those classes.
Online classes generally do a poor job of properly educating students, and while I realize that we will likely never go back to fully in-person classes, I do think the university should incentivize itself financially to offer fewer online classes.
The university currently charges less per credit hour for fully online students, so the best possible solution to this is for in-person students to receive the same lower cost per credit hour when they are taking online classes.
Convert Quads into true apartments
One of the best and most unique things about A-State is how many upperclass students live on campus due to the incredibly affordable apartments available. But the apartments fill up fast, pushing many students back to dorms or off-campus.
While building more apartments would be great, a more affordable option would be to add ovens to Northpark Quads.
The oven is the main difference between Collegiate Park and Northpark Quads. If students could cook in the Quads, the university could call them apartments, freeing people from having to buy a meal plan and increasing the number of upperclassmen living there.
Regardless of whether these ideas are implemented, I encourage anyone reading to find their way to improve A-State and leave this university better than the way you found it! Thank you all for making my time here some of the best years of my life!
For videos on these topics, visit https://abetterstate.weebly.com/
Categories: Opinion
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