Duke grad school on pennies? Just live in a van

Among the criteria Ken Ilgunas used when deciding where to go to graduate school: Would the local climate allow him to sleep in his van?

Yep, that's right. Ken Ilgunas lives in a van. In a Duke University parking lot. That's as specific as Ilgunas gets. See, he's doing this as a social experiment, to see if he can get through graduate school without debt.

Which means he's keeping a low profile. Or at least he was until he blew his own cover this week in this story featured prominently on the salon.com website.

Oh, and he has his own blog where the 26-year-old, who is enrolled in Duke's liberal studies graduate program, has chronicled his adventures.

Ilgunas grew up in a suburban, middle class family in Niagara Falls, NY. Mom's a nurse, dad's a factory worker. It was a good life but left Ilgunas wanting something more.

"I felt there was something vapid about the suburban lifestyle," he told me this week. "People work 40 hours a week and come home and watch TV. There's no beauty or poetry or adventure in that sort of life. I recognized I wasn't getting something out of that lifestyle."

Perhaps not surprisingly, Ilgunas is inspired by Henry David Thoreau and his "Walden," classic, a tale of inner peace.

"He's my guy," Ilgunas said of the author he dressed up as this past Halloween. "I have a nasty man-crush on him."

So Ilgunas has spent much of the year in his 1994 Ford Econoline he bought on Craigslist for $1,500. He "retrofitted" it by pulling some seats out. He converted the back seat to a bed.

Cozy!

He gets his mail at a campus post box, and he stays connected to the world using his laptop at the library or elsewhere on the totally-wired campus.

By the time you read this, Ilgunas will have left the parking space he has called home for four months to head to the North Carolina mountains for some outdoorsy winter-break adventures. But he'll return to Duke next semester and hopes the campus cops won't crack down on him, now that his story is out there.

I talked with him at length this week. Here are highlights:

So was living in your van the only way to pay for graduate school?

I could have easily taken out loans. But I had already gotten $32,000 in undergraduate loans and I knew what that was like to pay off. I worked for two-and-a-half years and almost every dime I made went into those loans. For a lot of students, they just get suckered into jobs that almost resemble indentured servitude. I was lucky. I got adventurous jobs. I was able to still lead an adventurous life even with this debt.

But I still wouldn't ever have to go through that responsibility ever again. Because even though I was living this exciting life, you can't truly be free if you have the obligation of paying off an enormous debt. But I could have easily taken out loans and paid them off in a relatively short time, probably a year of life. But it was more of an adventure, an experiment. I wanted to test myself.

Where are you parked?

I'm parked on campus. I'd rather not reveal my actual lot.

You're coming back to live there again next semester?

Yeah, I want to. If it doesn't work out for whatever reason from living in my van, there are lots of other ways of living frugally.  

You live in the van so presumably you save room and board, but you still have tuition to pay for.

I have no loans whatsoever. That was the experiment, to see if I could afford college in a day when college in general is practically unaffordable. I did find a part-time job with ... a government-sponsored program where lots of Duke students tutor inner-city kids. I only work 12 hours a week. With that, I'm able to afford tuition. I work with the park service in the summer. I'm actually saving money. I'm actually accumulating money only working 12 hours a week at school.

What's the tuition?

$3,000 a course. I did receive a decent financial aid package. They knocked it down to about $1,000 a course. Absolutely not from loans.

So you spend most of your time on campus?

I  basically live on campus. I'm rarely in the van. Just to eat and sleep. Generally it's not the most convenient place. The closest bathroom is quarter-mile away (in a building) and there's no source of water nearby. But with that said, I live pretty comfortably. I bring a water jug to campus and fill it up. And i have no problem 'holding it in' at night. Knock on wood. I've just learned I'm happy the way I'm living. I don't need a TV. I don't need trendy decor or an iPod, things like that.

I do have a laptop. I'm trying to be a writer. I spend all my time at the library or rooms on campus. I just walk around campus using rooms I can use. I've found rooms I can use 24/7. I never use electricity in the van because I wouldn't want lights to attract people or campus security. The whole thing is to keep it a secret. As far as I know, nobody knows.

And then you went and wrote about it? Why?

If Thoreau went to Walden Pond and didn't write about it, didn't write about his findings, what would be his point? The whole point of writing is sharing insights and perspectives. I just like it. I'm willing to pay the consequences. Every adventure needs a climax.  I don't mind if a little drama ensues.

In your Salon article, you talk about how you eat a lot of peanut butter.

It's just one of those things you don't need a fridge for. I obviously don't have a fridge so a lot of my stuff is dry. Beans, rice, noodles. Peanut butter - I never really had much of a predeliction before but now it's a borderline obsession. It tastes amazing in my soups. And I don't make spaghetti sauce, I make spaghetti stew with peanut butter. It really gives a nice consistency to any stew.

That sounds horrible.

No, not at all. It's good.

Have you had more trouble with extreme heat or cold?

The heat was far, far worse. The cold - I bought a sleeping bag up in the Arctic that is rated up to negative 20 degrees so I'm supposed to be able to sleep comfortably in that.  But getting out of the sleeping bag in the morning, that takes some will power.

The heat - I was totally unprepared for that this past fall. In August when I moved here, I came in straight from the Arctic. At night there it got below freezing so for some reason I imagined summer would be on its way out in North Carolina, too. I got here and it was 95 degrees and 75 percent humidity. I just could not go in the van during the day. It was like a greenhouse. I'd be in there a minute and my clothes would be totally saturated.

And you weren't going to turn on the AC?

No. That would just look awfully suspicious.

So you're always in hiding. Is it like a game?

Whenever I go to the van, I've made a rule for myself to never let anyone see me go in. Fortunately, it's a pretty remote lot on the fringe of campus. If anyone was around, I'd just keep walking past the van or sit under a tree. Whenever I leave the van, I look out to see if anyone would see me.

So why did you pick Duke?

During my three years between undergrad and grad, the thing I missed most was school. I felt my self-development had come to a halt. I wanted to get into a program. I thought about a history Ph.D, applied to six schools and got denied to all of them. In that process I discovered the liberal studies and that was perfect for me. For someone who doesn't want to specialize in one thing. Duke offered me the best deal.

Do you ever eat out in restaurants?

That would be extremely rare. Last semester I think I went to one restaurant and I think that was after the semester. This semester i have a bit more money. I'm able to splurge. I've probably been to a restaurant five times.

And when we say 'splurge'?

Ha. The fancy peanut butter at Whole Foods, and a new pair of hiking boots.

So you ate trash at one point?

I was in this room on campus late at night. It was on campus. I wasn't poor at all. I had more than enough money in the bank. But I was just hungry and didn't want to walk the quarter-mile back to the van. There was a stack of Panera boxes. I took a peek. There was a salad, a cookie that hadn't been opened and a bag of potato chips.

You couldn't do this just anywhere, but a college campus offers a lot of what you need, doesn't it?

I have a gym where I can shower. I have access to classrooms with 24-hour electricity. I have wifi. I pretty much have everything i need. There's limitations based on climate. I wouldn't be able to deal with the heat all year round if I was in Texas or Florida. I got accepted to a liberal studies program in Connecticut also. Wesleyan University. I came here because I thought the winters would be a lot more tolerable.

Have you had to lie a lot or misdirect people to keep your secret?

Yeah. Certainly. Last semester, a lot. I didn't want anyone on campus knowing so that made it difficult to develop friendships. I wanted to interact with the student body. I wanted friends. I wanted a group of students to have drinks with, a girlfriend. But my experiment was more important to me. So I would lie. or I wouldn't lie, I'd say I'm on 'this' street and letting them figure out I'm in an apartment rather than a parking lot. If they asked, I'd lie. That always bothered me.