The University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents approved the highest board fee increase and the second-highest housing fee increase over the last decade for the University of Maryland for fiscal year 2026, according to an analysis by The Diamondback.
The board voted 7-0 in a finance committee meeting on March 24 to approve a 5.4 percent housing fee increase and a 10.5 percent board fee increase for the next fiscal year. Students are set to pay an additional $512 for a typical double dorm room with air conditioning and $636 for a base resident dining plan for the 2025-26 school year.
Board and housing fees each increased by 3.6 percent for the 2025 fiscal year.
The university submitted the changes after hearing from stakeholders, such as Dining Services, according to Dining Services spokesperson Bart Hipple.
This university’s housing and dining services are self-supporting, which means that they generate their own funding, according to Residence Hall Association vice president Michelle Ameyaw. Room and board fees help pay for the department’s operating costs, the junior biological sciences major added.
RHA voted in December in favor of a 9.33 percent dining fee increase and nearly 4 percent room fee increase.
Ameyaw explained that board fees also allow campus dining halls to provide more options for students with dietary restrictions and religious accommodations.
“We need to have the funds to be able to create the correct environment behind the scenes so that we can provide for [those students],” Ameyaw said.
[UMD RHA votes in favor of increasing dining, housing fees]
Campus room and board costs have risen nearly every fiscal year since 2015 , according to The Diamondback’s analysis. Fiscal year 2021 was the only year in the past decade in which the university did not increase room or board costs.
“We really try and keep the increases at a minimum,” Hipple said. “We don’t want to be charging more than we really need to charge students to provide the quality and the service that they have come to expect from us.”
This university referred to the university system’s meeting documents in response to The Diamondback’s request for comment about the fee changes.
The documents state that this year’s higher room and board fees can be attributed to state-mandated increases in employee salaries and inflation for the cost of goods, services, food and insurance.
Greg Oler, this university’s vice president for finance and chief financial officer, attended the March 24 finance committee’s meeting.
According to meeting documents, Oler said this university is subject to labor agreements because the dining and housing services are self-operated.
This means that unlike some schools that can contract these services, this university must pay for cost-of-living adjustments and “merit-based wage increases,” Oler said, according to the documents.
[UMD prepares 2026 working budget amid USM funding cuts]
This university has increased its board fees by more than $400 three times within the last five years. Before fiscal year 2020, the increases only exceeded $150 once — in fiscal year 2017.
The fees fund dining operations, including labor, food and supplies, according to Hipple.
They also help utilities, landscaping and other campus support costs, he added.
“We are required to balance our budget at the end of every year,” Hipple said. “We do not want to cut services or quality of the experience to our students.”
Data reporter Theodore Rose contributed to this report.
