College Students Control $117 Billion in Discretionary Spending

7/5/13

College students spend $117 billion annually on discretionary purchases and $287 billion on nondiscretionary items such as tuition, room and board, and school supplies, according to re:fuel. Nearly three-quarters of current college students (73%) expect to be carrying education debt when they graduate; the average student loan is $16,904. Students take an average of 7.8 years to pay off these loans. Seven in 10 students (70%) are confident that their investment in a college education will pay for itself in the long term, up from 64% who said so in 2012.

Food is college students’ top discretionary expenditure, accounting for 36% of their total spending.

College students own an average of 6.9 electronic devices, such as laptops, gaming consoles, and smartphones. Laptops are most widely owned. Seven in 10 students who have laptops (70%) use them for schoolwork, and 47% take notes in class on them. A third of tablet owners (33%) and 13% of smartphone owners use these devices for taking notes in class, but taking notes with pen and paper is still the most common method (79%).

Nearly four in 10 college students who own tablets (37%) use them for reading textbooks in electronic format, although traditional print still accounts for the majority of all textbooks purchased in a semester (59%).

Three-quarters of students who own smartphones or tablets (75%) use them for product research while shopping in-store. The majority of these (74%) purchased items in-store after researching them, while 38% went on to shop elsewhere (off- or online), and 32% decided to purchase different brands than the ones they’d originally been considering (multiple responses allowed).

College students spend 14.4 hours daily multitasking on various devices; much of this time is devoted to entertainment. Almost half (49%) use a second screen while watching TV on a daily basis. Top multitasking activities while watching TV include using Facebook or Twitter (63%), visiting other websites (58%), playing video games (50%), and doing schoolwork (37%). Fewer than one in five engage in second-screen activities that are related to the content they’re watching, such as researching program content (18%), checking to see what their friends are watching (17%), or participating in on-air polls (7%).

SOURCE: “13th Annual College Explorer Study,” June 2013, re:fuel, Tammy Nelson, VP Marketing & Research, 151 W. 26th St., 12th Fl., New York, 10001; 212-401-0070; tnelson@refuelnow.com; www.refuelnow.com. Price: Contact for information.

© 2013 Business Valuation Resources, LLC (BVR). May not be reproduced without written consent of publisher.

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