Say goodbye to meal plans as you knew them.

Next fall, the University will restructure the on-campus meal plans available to students, scrapping plans that allocate a certain number of meals per week in favor of plans that grant students a fixed number of meal credits per semester.

As a result of the change, students will no longer be able to redeem unused meal credits at retail locations in the dorms, and Entrée Plus will be replaced by two separate credit programs called "Blue Bucks" and "Dining Dollars."

Dining Dollars can only be used at dorm convenience stories and in the dining halls to supplement meal credits, while Blue Bucks will be a more flexible option resembling the current Entrée Plus system. Blue Bucks will also be redeemable at dormitory dining halls and stores as well as participating off-campus restaurants.

With the change, the meal plans, mandatory for students living on campus, maintain their average price from last year of about $10 a meal.

The changes are meant to simplify the meal plans and give students more flexibility in deciding when and how they want to spend their meal credits, said Michael Lee, the University's director of Residential Dining Services.

The new standard meal plan, 150 Block, offers students 150 meals to use at their leisure over the course of a semester, which works out to roughly 10 meals per week.

The deal also provides students with 75 Blue Bucks and 75 Dining Dollars.

The 200 Block plan offers 200 meals a semester - about 13 meals per week - and provides 75 Blue Bucks and 75 Dining Dollars to spend.

A third plan offers unlimited meals, 25 Blue Bucks and 25 Dining Dollars per semester.

Like Entrée Plus, student will be able to add more Blue Bucks or Dining Dollars to their account throughout the semester.

LSA freshman Zach White said he didn't like the changes.

"I'm not too excited about the meal plan changes," he said. "I like the flexibility and versatility of the current system, and I don't know how economically efficient the new plans will be for students."

The cost of each plan is subject to change until the University Board of Regents approves them. The 150 Block plan is tentatively planned to cost $1,685, the 200 Block plan $1,805 and the unlimited plan $2,045.

University Housing spokesman Peter Logan said meal prices will stay constant despite the changes to the plans.

Logan said inflation and fixed costs like dining hall staff wages and operational costs are the main factors that determine the price of meal plans. Students often neglect to take these costs into account when evaluating meal rates, he said.

The University spent more than a year developing the new plans, he said.

During that time, Residential Dining Services hired a professional consultant, spoke with various student focus groups on campus and consulted with the Residence Halls Association, which acts as the student government of University residence halls.

Dining services issued a survey last year to students living in residence halls and off-campus locations to evaluate their opinions of the University's residential dining services.

After looking at the results, officials found that "students said that the meal plans were too complicated with too many rules," Lee said.

LSA freshman Cassandra Yaple, vice president of public relations for RHA, said her organization played a large role in devising the meal plan changes.

"If we hadn't given the presentations we gave or talked to the board, some of the changes would not have been made," she said. "We gave them suggestions and feedback to improve plans that were different from the original resolutions."

Yaple said that while the new system might seem confusing at first, students will ultimately benefit from the new plan.

"People are confused because it's so different," she said. "Some are happy because Block plans offer more flexibility and convenience, but the new divisions between Dining Dollars and Blue Bucks can be frustrating."