University of Virginia Library

XXI. The Students—Their Expenses

What were the expenses which had to be met by the
students during the long interval now under review
(1865–1895)? First, let us consider the fees. The
tuition fee in the academic department remained unchanged,
—admission to three schools still imposed a
total charge of seventy-five dollars or twenty-five dollars
respectively. The fee of the department of law
was advanced from eighty dollars to one hundred,
and the fee of the department of medicine, from one
hundred and five to one hundred and twenty (1895).
In the engineering and agricultural departments, the tuition
fee continued stationary. It was still one hundred
dollars. The general fees showed some fluctuation;
thus, during the session of 1872–73, the matriculation
fee was thirty dollars; in 1889, it sank to twenty-five, and

remained at that figure until the session of 1895–96,
when it rose to forty. The contingent fee neither advanced
beyond nor fell below ten dollars. The infirmary
fee declined from seven dollars and a half to
seven; the total matriculation, contingent and tuition
fees of the academic student, at the end of the Seventh
Period (1895), was one hundred and twenty-five dollars;
and the like fees of the student of law, agriculture and
engineering, one hundred and fifty; and of the student of
medicine and pharmacy, one hundred and seventy.

At the beginning of the session of 1865, a general
regulation that each student should find a room within
the precincts was adopted. The only exceptions allowed
were in the instances of young men who had been actually
maimed in battle, or had suffered a serious impairment
of health through exposure in service or through wounds.
On the threshold of the session of 1866, several persons
asked to be licensed as keepers of outboarding
houses, and as the number of matriculates enrolled during
the session of 1865–66 had turned out to be unexpectedly
large, these petitions were acceded to, on condition
that the charges should not be higher than those
of the University hotels. In 1872, when the attendance
had begun to fall away, the Board required that no student
should be permitted to obtain a room outside the
bounds so long as there should be a vacant one within;
and this was their attitude also with respect to board.
In 1883, the matriculate who resided in an outboarding
house had to make a deposit of fifteen dollars for dormitory
rent. At the end of the session the amount due
for unoccupied apartments was added up, and this had
to be paid by the students lodging outside. In no instance,
however, was any one of them to be liable for
more than fifteen dollars.

Among the hotel-keepers at the beginning of this
period, the most prominent was, perhaps, Miss Ross.[11]
She complained, during the session of 1865–66, that she
had lost a large sum in consequence of her failure to
require the payment of board by the quarter. William
Jefferies suffered equally as much for the same reason.
By the session of 1875–76, the number of hotels had
been cut down from three to two. Many of the students
now curtailed their expenses by joining in messes. This
system of boarding had been suggested as early as 1869,
owing to the poverty of the hotel-fare during the previous
session. The Faculty approved of its trial, and recommended,
in their report to the Board, that the young
men should be permitted to form dining-clubs, on condition
that these clubs should always be subject to the
proctor's supervision. In 1873, there was organized a
club with eight members; and this was said to have reduced
the cost of the table to its members to ten dollars
a month as the maximum. So satisfactory was the working
of the two existing messes in 1874–75, that, at the
end of this session, the Visitors offered to reserve the
hotel at the south end of East Range entirely for such
associations, which were to pay a moderate rent for
its use. This hotel was no longer open.

The advantage of the clubs already established having
been fully proven by June, 1876, the Board authorized
the Faculty to inaugurate a general system of messing

at the beginning of the next session, provided that
a sufficient number of young men should be willing to
participate in it. The dormitories on Carr's Hill were
assigned as the place for testing the projected scheme.
It seems to have been attended with success, for, during
the session of 1876–77, there were fifty students enrolled
in two different messes in that quarter, both of which were
managed by the same caterer. At the same time, there
was a messing club which occupied rooms in Dawson's
Row. It was reported that the monthly amount which
each member of any one of these messes had to pay did not
run beyond fifteen dollars as the maximum. This sum
embraced the charges for the rent of the room, furniture,
fuel, lights, and servants' hire as well as for food.
The daily cost of the latter,—which also included the
rations for the attendants,—was estimated at twenty-five
cents. In 1878, the total charge in the mess for nine
months was in the neighborhood of one hundred and
three dollars, while the total charge for the student who
boarded at a hotel was eighteen dollars for thirty days,
or one hundred and sixty-two for the session. If he
resided in a licensed outboarding house, the cost to him
during the same period was one hundred and thirty-five
dollars.[12]

During the session of 1879–80, there were one hundred
and fifty young men procuring their meals in the
hotels, eighty in the messes, and ninety-nine beyond the
precincts,—a proof that mere cheapness did not influence
the majority to desert the more expensive tables.

The same condition was observable during the session
of 1881–2: of the three hundred and twenty-seven
students enrolled in the University, fifty-eight preferred
the mess and one hundred and twenty-five the several
hotels, while the remainder were scattered among the outboarding
houses and the private homes. A decline in
the popularity of the messing system had become distinctly
preceptible by 1882, although there was no complaint
of the quality of the fare that was served, and none
also of the higher charge for it, since the cost of food
was known to have advanced. There was, however,
dissatisfaction over the imposition of a tax of twenty
cents monthly on each member of a mess.

But that the Faculty were determined to make the
messing system a permanent feature of the University,
in spite of this fluctuating feeling, was shown by their
recommendation, in 1887, that a kitchen and diningroom
should be provided for Dawson's Row; and these
additions were actually completed, during the session of
1888–89, at a cost of fifteen hundred and sixty-four dollars.
The like additions were made on Carr's Hill by
October, 1888. These measures were successful in effecting
the purpose which they had in view, for, during
that session, there were at least eighty students enrolled
in the mess of Dawson's Row alone. Twelve
months afterwards, the Faculty recommended to the
Board that the following regulations, in modification of
the existing rules bearing upon the subject of board,
should be adopted: (1) that each student should be at
liberty to select his own hotel, boarding-house, or messing-club,
without regard to the locality of his room;
(2) that every one of those taking their meals within the
precincts should be required to deposit the amount of
his board each month in advance in the hands of the

proctor; (3) that no one among them should be permitted
to abandon his seat at a hotel or mess table
without giving thirty days' notice, unless he was about
to withdraw permanently from the University.

In 1893, the young men boarding within the precincts
petitioned the Faculty for the deferment of the dinner-hour
from one to two o'clock; but their request
was refused. In their indignation, they ironically suggested
that the following rules should be proclaimed by
the college authorities: that no student should possess
the right to eat between his meals, or dance, or play
cards, or perform on any instrument whatever, except
the bass-drum and the Jew's harp; and that no student
should be privileged to smoke more than three pipes of
tobacco in the course of a day, or to retire to bed without
a professor's written consent, or to carry a cane, unless
it were a holiday. Immediate expulsion was to be the
penalty for his absence from his room after ten o'clock
at night, or for daring to be seen with a cigar in his
mouth.

During the session of 1890–91, it was estimated that
the total annual expenses of a matriculate in the academic
department, if enrolled from Virginia, were two hundred
dollars as the minimum; and if from another State,
two hundred and seventy-five. In the department of law,
on the other hand, the minimum expense by the year
was calculated to be two hundred and eighty dollars;
and in the department of medicine, three hundred and
ten. In the School of Pharmacy, the general expense
of the matriculate from Virginia was put down at two
hundred and eighty dollars; of one from another State,
at three hundred and twenty. The general expense of
the latter student in the department of engineering or
agriculture was nearly the same; namely, three hundred

dollars. The matriculate from Virginia, on the
other hand, was called upon to pay only two hundred
and fifty dollars in the department of engineering, and
two hundred in the department of agriculture. In all
these cases, the figures given indicated the minimum general
expense in the several departments. The maximum,
in each instance, was represented by an addition of one
hundred dollars. The corresponding figures for all the
departments had risen appreciably by the beginning of
the session of 1894–95.

A contributor to Corks and Curls, in 1895, considered
the Faculty's estimates previous to that year
to be far too modest in amount. It was the conviction of
this writer that not many students could pass an entire
session at the University without paying out at least six
hundred dollars; and, in the opinion of the same observer,
one thousand dollars was not an unreasonable
sum for him to spend, provided that his whole time was
not absorbed in text-books. As it was, he said, the expense
of one State student who matriculated during the
session of 1872–73, had demonstrated that the collegian
could reduce his outlay to a figure as low as one hundred
and forty dollars.