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Many College Students Are Too Poor to Eat
But no one can agree on just how many. Now lawmakers are introducing a bill to change that.
By Adam Harris
July 11, 2019
A recent federal watchdog report about the breadth of food insecurity
on America’s college campuses came with a caveat: “Nationally
representative survey data that would support direct estimates of the
prevalence of food insecurity among college students do not exist,” the
Government Accountability Office wrote in the report to lawmakers.
There is a growing body of research saying that college students are
routinely going hungry, but it is not consistent in describing the
scale of the problem.
Whatever the exact numbers, the report stressed, there are possibly
millions of students who don’t have enough to eat. One recent survey
from Temple University, for example, found that nearly 50 percent of
students at more than 100 schoolscouldn’t afford to eat a balanced meal
and 35 percent of students were skipping meals entirely because they
did not have enough money for food. Nationally, about 13 percent of
Americans are food-insecure, but some surveys have estimated that the
percent of college students in the same situation is roughly three
times that. This population is particularly vulnerable to going hungry,
as many are spending all available funds on costs associated with
school, and holding down a full-time job—let alone a lucrative one—can
be incredibly difficult.
Conservative critics of research on campus food insecurity, who oppose
interventions to assist these college students, have used the lack of
definitive, nationally representative samples to discount the work.
Survey response rates were too low, they argued; there were shifting
definitions of insecurity; the surveys were not optimally designed.
A new bill, released Thursday by Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut,
with companion legislation sponsored in the House by Representative
Jahana Hayes, also of Connecticut, and Representative Marcia Fudge of
Ohio, aims to eliminate that doubt. The bill, which they are calling
the Closing the College Hunger Gap Act, would require federal data
collection on food and housing insecurity. “This bill is important so
that we have a real, consistent national window on where student hunger
is happening, where it's the worst, and [which] schools are creating
interventions that make a difference,” Murphy told me in an interview.
“The most important thing is to understand where it exists, and who's
doing well to combat it. And until you standardize the data, you can't
really compare interventions.” The data would be gathered by adding
questions to the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study, a
comprehensive, government-run examination of how students pay for
college education.
The bill also aims to address one of the most significant findings of
the GAO report: Almost 2 million “at-risk” students—meaning students
who are low-income or first-generation, are raising children, or have
another risk factor—do not receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program, or SNAP, benefits (more commonly known as food stamps) for
which they are potentially eligible. “Students cannot solely rely on
the generosity of food banks to keep on course to succeed—we need to
prioritize and address the systemic barriers in the way of an equitable
path to a college degree,” Hayes told me in a statement. The bill
directs the secretary of education to work with federal agencies to
reach out to students who might be eligible for the benefits.
But the onus would not fall only on the government, Murphy expects.
“When schools all of a sudden have to report on food-insecurity rates,
they will become more interested in finding ways to make students less
food-insecure,” he told me. “And the easiest and most cost-effective
way for schools to reduce food insecurity is to get more of their kids
signed up for SNAP if they’re eligible.”
Of course, in a divided Congress, the path forward for the bill is
unclear. Congress is considering a reauthorization of the federal law
governing higher education, known as the Higher Education Act, and
experts are skeptical as to whether any legislation affecting higher
education could move outside of that bill. Senators Lamar Alexander of
Tennessee and Patty Murray of Washington, the leading Republican and
Democrat on the Senate education committee, respectively, have both
said they want to strike a deal on a reauthorization bill before the
end of this Congress, but disagreement on fundamental issues such as
student aid and how colleges should be held accountable for things like
completion have slowed progress.
But Murphy and Hayes have hope for their legislation because, as Sara
Goldrick-Rab, a professor at Temple whose work has thrust the issue
into the national spotlight, told me in January: “Food insecurity is a
college-completion issue,” meaning that it’s causing students to drop
out. By not solving the problem, she said, “we’re undermining our
federal investment in financial aid.”
Murphy echoed that sentiment. “When schools aren’t accountable for who
completes and who doesn’t, then they don’t feel the need to think about
the barriers to completion, like hunger,” he told me. The bill, he
hopes, would be a first step toward getting students fed, and
eventually graduated.
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