Meal plan at my school (Canada, about a decade ago) was 2800$ Canadian for 19 meals a week, for two semesters (checking, it is now about 3600$CAD). Worked out to somewhere in the range of 4 or 5 dollars a meal - what a bagel and a coffee would cost at a cheap chain place.

That being said, I think you did point out something interesting - the pricing and food quality doesnt vary much between different schools in similar situations (markets/locations). In what I've seen, this is because most of these are run by the same big corporate chains - Sodexo or similar.