Students spend countless thousands on housing fees for dorms they may never live in at colleges and universities they may never attend.

The ethics of charging such fees to cash-strapped families are now being scrutinized.

Colleges are asking students for untold thousands of dollars in nonrefundable fees for dorm rooms they may never live in.

Some of the fees, which recently caught the eye of the college admissions officials, may fall in an ethical gray area.

At times, would-be students are asked to pay money to save a spot in dorm rooms they will never have the chance to live in because they are subsequently rejected, without a refund. At other times, according to the head of National Association for College Admission Counseling’s Admissions Practices Committee, a deposit request could be considered an attempt to manipulate the admissions process.

The University of Florida, which became the focus of recent chatter, collects roughly $170,000 a year from students for dorm rooms they will never call home.

About $100,000 of that comes from some 4,700 students whom the university doesn’t admit, said T.J. Logan, an associate director of housing at University of Florida. The university asks all applicants who would like to live in the dorms to pay a housing application fee – that’s $25 students don’t get back even if they aren’t admitted.

Another $70,000 or so comes from about 700 students who pay a down payment on a dorm room before May 1 but then don’t live on campus, either because they live somewhere else in Gainesville or went somewhere else for college. Florida asks admitted students to pay a $175 fee even if they have yet to enroll. At most, $75 of each payment is refunded; the university keeps the rest.

…The goal of the fees is to help gauge demand for housing and to try to come up with a fair way to distribute the university’s 7,500 spaces.

Logan said if the university waited to take housing applications until after everyone was admitted, “a very large percentage of our incoming class would have the exact same application date, leaving us with no differentiation for the purpose of assigning spaces.”

But Ohio State University does just that, said Christy Blessing, the university’s director of housing services. The university charges a $50 application fee and a $300 space reservation fee – but only after a student has committed to attending Ohio State.

“We don’t contract with students for housing until after they have committed to the university,” Blessing said. That practice give Ohio State a better sense of the real number of students likely to attend.

Parents may consider some fees levied before their students enroll an example of inappropriate arm-twisting by universities.