If neither being nor killing hobo works out, I have one really good recommendation: mash.

Almost any of your basic root vegetables make excellent mash, and will be really cheap if you can get them from a fruit and veg shop. Don't trust any supermarkets that have them shrinkwrapped or pre-packaged or whatever, they will not be fresh, and you'll be paying for somebody to have dug them up, cleaned them, stuck them in a bag, when you could just be paying for the first stage.

Anyway, if you have mash, you have maybe 3/4 of a good meal. I would particularly recommend butternut squash and parsnip mash with marjoram (dried, the fresh stuff is expensive and doesn't last long) and lots of butter.

If you're going to be doing rice, ramen and other boilables, do what I do:

Buy a big ol' bag of frozen vegetables, and while boiling the water for the rice and whatnot, just dump some veggies right into the boiling water. It saves you having to buy a vegetable steamer, and sure you have soggy vegetables, but it's not like this is gourmet cooking. This way, when you eat your rice or ramen, you're getting a bit of vegetable nutrients along with it, instead of just straight-up blasting yourself with starches and whatnot.

I'm going to second the beans suggestions.  Being of the Hispanic persuasion, I can tell you how perfect a food it is.  But I have one recommendation: don't buy canned beans.  If you don't know any better they taste all right, but after you've had dried beans they taste like human feces.  To cook dried beans, soak them overnight, pour off the water, then boil them with a little salt for about an hour.  After they're soft, pour off that water too.  If you buy them in quantity, it costs around $1 a pound (compared to like $1.25 per can).  That's in the states, anyway. 

Also in the states, onions are an excellent food which you can buy for like 50 cents a pound.  Raw or fried, they make a pretty good addition to any meal and they last a long time without refrigeration.  They also help fight scurvy.  You don't want scurvy, do you?

Beans and rice are cheap and a complete protein.

Pasta and peas are also a complete protein.

If you're using fresh veggies, be sure to save the ends and stems. At the end of the week, boil them to make veggie broth and use that for soups and as a cooking liquid.  It'll stretch your money a bit more, as well as adding nutrients.  I'd suggest doing the same with leftover bones, but something tells me meat is going to be scarce at your place for awhile.

Also, while buying whole veggies and fruit is cheaper, if you don't eat it, it's still wasted money. When I was a student, I went ahead and splurged on containers of pre-cut melon and pineapple because I quickly learned I wouldn't get around to cutting it up myself.

A rice cooker is a good investment. They are super cheap (mine was twenty bucks) and will cook more rice than you know what to do with.  If you can, you can make your rice in it at the beginning of the week, then store it in the fridge and just take out and reheat what you need that day.

A crockpot is also a good investment. You can make soups and stews in it. It'll cook the food while you're in class. Cheaper cuts of meat do very well in it. However, it sounds like you don't have access to a full kitchen, so you might hold off on that.

Another way to steam vegetables whilst steaming rice is to put a pile of veggies into a small bowl and put it in the water, sitting on the rice, but of course not submerged in the water.

I work in a Chinese restaurant as a kitchen assistant. Well basically, all the older more experienced chefs make me do all the crappy jobs but anyway, where was I?

A quick guide to steaming rice:

Pour the amount of rice you want, measured in small bowls, such as bowls you use to eat ice cream. 1 bowl of rice feeds a bit more than one person. If you are having 6 people for dinner use 4 and a half bowls of rice.

Fill the steamer up with water and wash the rice. Only do this one time because if you do it continuously it will wash the flavoring out of the rice. I use to wash the rice constantly because I felt the rice was dirty, in the end the rice won't even taste different. When the water turns white it is not "germs" in the rice, it is starch.

Empty the starchy water and fill it up with new water. It will still be white but never mind it. Level the rice out and the water should be about 4-5 milliliter's above the rice. If you use too little or too much water, the rice will turn out soft, soggy, and sticky. Try and experiment with different levels of water till you achieve a non-sticky rice.

The rice you see in the commercials is not what good rice should look like. In my opinion it looks too hard and too fake to consume. Rice should be soft but not soft so it sticks.

Try getting oats and bran with whey protein (doesn't really matter if it is a concentrate or isolate, although the former will probably be cheaper) and mixing them for breakfast. The fiber and protein will make you feel full for a while. I love plain chicken breast, costs me about ten bucks for three pounds and I can male it last four three or four days for lunch with some broccoli. The thing is to make your meals into salads, lettuce is cheap and will fill you up. If you have a bulk food store near you, stop in and see if they sell almonds by the pound for snacks. It may be a little pricey but they should last you a while and are great for you

I didn't see Bananas...  Seriously, at 59 cents a pound (39 cents on sale) you've got cheap food!

I try to buy cheap but at one point I was living on roughly 20 (Canadian) a week.  Here's what's good that wasn't posted or is a less charby version of the cup'o'noodlz:

IF YOU HAVE $20
-Bananas
-Cucumber sandwiches : loaf of bread $2, spreadable cream cheese $3.50 and a cucumber $1 sliced up, that's roughly 5 or 6 bucks but a good eight or ten sandwiches!
-Mixed beans.  Usually a huge can goes for less than $1.  Now when you go to Harvey's or Burger King, just steal a bunch of condiment packages as I regularly do.  Vinegar is your friend.  Use the vinegar on the mixed beans and you've got two or three meals there.  The vinegar makes the beans taste better over time (if you keep this in the fridge for two or three days)
-Eggs: Already mentioned I know, but deserves a second mention as they are pretty much the least expensive source of important protein.  There are also countless ways to cook them.
-Dollar Store Popcorn: I've never done it but people I know lived off huge bags of dollar store popcorn.  For 99 cents they'd get this pillow sized popcorn bag and live off of it.

IF YOU DON'T HAVE MONEY
Ever see that Seinfeld episode where the dude gets donuts from the garbage bin behind a donut shop?  A good friend of mine used to live off that (and the 99 cent bags of popcorn).  Soup kitchens are good too.

At one point in the fall I'd go for walks around town and where I lived there were pear trees overhanging from yards onto the sidewalk.  So I'd grab a whole bag of pears and just eat away.  No one ever gave me shit and really you can't complain with free fruit.

My cheap cooking in my student days consisted mostly of buying pasta/spaghetti, the cheapest meat I could get my hand on at the supermarket (anything on offer), some onions and mushrooms and cheap pasta sauces (the 8 pence ones, pure class) making up big woks worth of this. Putting the bulk in the fridge and reheating when needed and adding a little parmesan or grated cheese. A weeks worth of meals for a pound or so, prudent.

I would get in a bunch of instant noodles or savoury rice packets and mix with beans as well for instant meals, but I was worried about eating that too much because my mother told me I would die of salt poisoning or something.

Beyond that cheap sandwich fodders, fishfingers and burgers cost next to nothing if you buy supermarket brands, cheese and some chorizo or whatever for lighter snacks.

Bread is always good as well, bread with everything, makes food more filling for less cost and you can always just go for toast.

I agree with whoever said the supermarket is your friend, something is always on offer to a ridiculous price to draw you in and you can just be prudent and plan your weeks eating around that. Just because you have nothing doesnt mean you cant eat fairly varied stuff. The straight ramen diet stuff doesnt make much sense logically or health wise.

I once bought 10 pounds of potatoes for 2 bucks. I don't know about all this fruity nutrition crap but you can do a lot with potatoes: mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, fried potatoes, fried potato skins, boiled potatoes--shoot, I'll eat those suckers raw like an apple. Throw in just a few more cheap ingredients and you can make potatoes into a whole slew of things: potato soup, potatoes au gratin, twice-baked potatoes, potato bread, potato gnocchi. I have no idea what that means or even how to pronounce it; all I know is that it is delicious.

Potatoes, man, I tell ya: that's where it's at.

to add tuna to anything I use the one with water not oil and i drain it and rinse it because it takes the strong fishy taste out of it. also you can buy canned salmon mix with onion and seasonings and cruched up crackers, form into pattys and pan fry it. you can buy canned corned beef hash and cook with potatos.

www.thriftyfun.com has a recipes section ........and if you read recipes you can usually find ways to work with what you have or can afford, plus you can leave out any ingredients you don't like.