Focus Feature: Experiencing Food Insecurity on Campus

Many who work closely with college students have known for a while that hunger is a serious problem facing them. Although recent headlines over the past few years have called food insecurity a “hidden” or “surprising” problem on college campuses, it is not new.¹ Researchers affiliated with the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice began tracking college student food insecurity in Wisconsin over a decade ago. And a study on food insecurity at the University of Hawaii from 2009 showed that 21 percent of students were dealing with the issue. In response, the Michigan State Student Food Bank and the Oregon State University Food Pantry established the College and University Food Bank Alliance in 2012 to help provide food for students in need.² The Alliance has grown to 700 members nationwide.

The stereotype that students only eat ramen, cereal, or the free food they get from events on campus makes light of the staggering number of students who are forced to make difficult choices between buying food or paying for school fees, books, diapers for their children, or transportation to campus. It also has made light of the burdens of making these choices on students’ mental and physical health and academic performance.³ Pam Eddinger, president of Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC), an institution in Boston, explained that, “This isn’t just about feeding people; it’s also about student success and completion.”

Until now, we have not known the definite number of how many students nationwide struggle to afford adequate food, but a Government Accountability Office (GAO) review of existing studies on food insecurity on college campuses found that the biggest risk factor for food insecurity is low income.⁴ On top of that, 29 percent of all undergraduate students and 75 percent of all low-income undergraduate students had at least one additional risk factor, like disability, homelessness, or status as a first-generation college student or a former foster youth. In our survey, 46 percent of current college students report that often, or at least sometimes, in the last 12 months, the food they bought just did not last and they did not have money to buy more.

Current data available on the issue suggest that community college students are more likely than other students to have higher levels of food insecurity. This is because community colleges tend to have larger percentages of first-generation and low-income students and fewer resources to meet their needs: About 39 percent of the student body at public two-year institutions have a family income below $35,000, compared to 28 percent of students at public four-year institutions.⁵

To document how many students were facing hunger at BHCC, the institution participated in the Hope Lab’s basic needs insecurity survey. The survey found that over half of respondents ran out of food and could not afford to buy more in the previous month, and nearly half reported skipping meals or eating less because they could not afford enough food.⁶ Eddinger explained that when she presents these data, people sometimes have a hard time believing it. “This tells me that poverty and hunger and homelessness has so much stigma attached to it,” she says, “that even with the numbers in front of them, it’s really hard for people to see someone in college and think of someone who doesn’t have enough money to buy food.”

Even at well-resourced universities, students still grapple with hunger. The University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) has the second lowest percentage of low-income students of all public higher education institutions in the state.⁷ Even with all this wealth, a 2017 study revealed that one in five students at UMD are food insecure. In an interview with The Diamondback, a student-run newspaper that has worked to highlight this issue, , the leading researcher of the study, Yu-Wei Wang, reported that students had a lot to say about their struggles: “In my 20 years of doing research, I’ve never seen something like this,” she said. “We have students who wrote paragraphs describing their experiences.” ⁸ One student wrote, “Early in my graduate school experience, I went through incredible financial difficulty, a brief period of homelessness escaping domestic violence and limited access to food. … I cried most nights because I didn’t have enough money to make ends meet.”

To help students meet their immediate needs, many schools have a food pantry on campus. But pantries are not a perfect solution. The Hope Lab’s survey of campus pantries found that students may not be aware that their school has a pantry, and 5 percent of the pantries require proof of financial need.⁹ Most pantries are only open during the day, making them less accessible to students who are only on campus in the evenings. Even when students have access to this resource, social stigma around food insecurity makes them hesitant to visit. Another common problem that pantries face is that perishable food is often unavailable or limited due to storage constraints, and the food supply, in general, is not enough to meet demand. “Usually the campus pantry would run out of food every week,” said Wang. Bunker Hill encounters similar supply challenges. In an interview, President Eddinger explained: “We have a monthly mobile market that brings 8,000 pounds of food to our campus. It is gone within two hours.”¹⁰

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),¹¹ a program that provides federal assistance to help low-income individuals afford food, does not apply to many college students. If students attend college at least half time, they generally cannot receive benefits unless they participate in a federal work-study program or work at least 20 hours a week. Even when eligible, many students neither realize that they could get food stamps nor know how to apply. The GAO’s study found that two million potentially eligible students did not report receiving benefits in 2016. And even if students do use SNAP, like the 1,000 students at Bunker Hill who are enrolled in this program, they still often run out of food before the end of the month.

Despite all of these challenges, Bunker Hill and UMD have rallied to support students. President Eddinger has been outspoken about food insecurity’s toll on her students, and was one of three community college presidents who advocated for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to ask the GAO to study food insecurity.¹² When asked why she has been so involved with this issue, she replied, “I think it’s the history of who we are at Bunker Hill. I was incredibly touched when I came on campus and realized what the last president, President Mary Fifield, had done in setting the example of helping the student in whatever area the students need help in.” BHCC was one of the first campuses to adopt Single Stop, a nationwide program to help students file taxes, apply for health care, find child care, locate housing, and access other benefits like legal aid.¹³ Single Stop helps students apply for food stamps and also houses Bunker Hill’s food pantry. Panera Bread also does a daily bread donation through the office, but the food disappears quickly. President Eddinger estimates that approximately 2,500 students use this resource per year.

UMD has undertaken a number of initiatives this academic year in response to the results of its food insecurity study. The campus pantry is working to raise enough money to move to a larger facility that has more storage space for perishable food. Dining services is hiring for an Americorps position to coordinate a hunger-free campus work group. The Department of Transportation renamed one of its free weekend shuttle routes a grocery shopping route, which Wang said students mentioned as particularly helpful in the follow-up interviews she conducted last fall. The shuttle takes students to grocery stores, like Giant and Safeway, which is crucial, given the fact that the USDA designated College Park a food desert in 2015, and the on-campus grocery options are more expensive and tend to have less produce.¹⁴

Wang’s presentations at UMD about food insecurity on campus also sparked students to take action. After hearing the study’s findings in October, the Student Government Association voted to allocate its unused budget from the previous year to create the Emergency Meal Fund for students who need food.¹⁵ This program gives students who need emergency support 10 meal swipes on a dining card. The pilot program paid for 1,660 meal swipes this academic year. The pantry at UMD has also seen a spike in donations. Wang explained that both student groups and academic departments have been collecting more food for the pantry this year, and “we’ve been getting more donations from the Capital Area Food Bank and different food drives on campus.” The study’s findings also inspired seven business school scholars to spend the fall studying food insecurity on campus.¹⁶ They presented recommendations on how the university can better support hungry students to the Department of Student Affairs at the conclusion of the semester.

The interim challenge remains making students aware of and helping them take advantage of available supports. The Campus Pantry at UMD is partnering with freshmen orientation this summer to let students know, before class even begins, about on-campus resources for those who experience difficulties affording food. Additionally, Brian Watkins, the director of the Office of Parent and Family Affairs at UMD, is encouraging professors to include a section about basic needs and campus resources in their syllabi.¹⁷ He hopes this will help both faculty and students become more informed about resources and make students feel more comfortable reaching out for help. Wang emphasized the need to facilitate faculty-student conversations about hunger to remove much of the stigma around the issue. “A lot of time students don’t feel comfortable to tell faculty that they are struggling to find food to eat, but faculty are who the students see every day,” she points out.

Institutions alone cannot ensure that basic needs are met; policies must change to reflect the reality that student demographics and student needs are changing. Federal and state governments need to ensure that social support programs, like SNAP and shelters, do not exclude students. Eddinger told the story of a student who was homeless: “we were trying to place him in a shelter, but he couldn’t stay there because he was a full-time student. To stay at the shelter, he would have had to have dropped some of his classes.”

There is growing awareness and momentum behind changing policies to meet students’ basic needs, and lawmakers have a once-in-a-decade opportunity to make meaningful policy changes for a substantial number of students in the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Congress has the opportunity to address the rising overall cost of college, which includes living expenses, by allocating more funds to grants for students with financial needs.