Parents pay for laundry, maids and meal kits for college kids

Affluent parents are paying for laundry and maid service for their college darlings, reports Grey Battle in the Washington Post. Some students get meal kits and moving services too. In theory, it saves time that will be spent pursuing knowledge.

Personal-service providers pitch productivity, writes Battle. “There are better things you could do with your time in college,” says Dorm Mom, which offers laundry, dorm cleaning, grocery delivery and moving services. Tovala, which delivers meal kits for students, warns, “Planning what to make for breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week quickly becomes exhausting as a student with a full schedule.”

E&R Laundry has more than 10,000 customers at 106 schools. They pay $800 and $1,800 each academic year for laundry services. “When you dress well, when your clothes are clean, you act better,” says the owner, Rick Botnick.

“A clean and clutter-free environment gives them the best opportunity to excel and focus,” says John Grant, who owns Maids of Capitol Hill. He charges $160 to clean a student's apartment. Laundry is extra.

Demand is rising for moving services too. Holly Benjamin, who works for the moving service Lugg, says the rise of dorm decorators has helped business. Students have "more stuff to move in and out."

Elijah Hurewitz-Ravitch, raised by helicopter parents, started Yale with laundry service, he told Battle. He had a revelation when he lived on his own one summer: “Laundry is easy.”

If students don't learn to research, reason and write at college, at least they should learn basic adulting skills, such as how to feed yourself, clean up after yourself and operate a washer and dryer. It's really not that hard.

Elite colleges are breeding socialists, argues Kimberlee Josephson, a business professor at Lebanon Valley College, in the Wall Street Journal. All-you-can-eat meal plans, campus shuttles, fitness centers, counseling and health care seem to be free, because the "costs are embedded in tuition and fees, endowment income, donor support and government funding."

"Is it any wonder that many graduates experience sticker shock on entering adult life?," writes Josephson. "Grocery bills, utility payments, security deposits, transportation, internet service, gym memberships and countless other expenses suddenly become explicit rather than bundled."