Thousands and thousands of low-income college students are missing out on food-assistance advantages, a latest study from the federal government shows.
An estimated 3.3 million college students meet the eligibility requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), aka food stamps, in keeping with a latest report published Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The federal government researchers found that 67% of those students didn’t receive food assistance in 2020, essentially the most recent data available.
“Too many college students are unable to flee hunger as they pursue their educational goals,” Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., who requested the GAO conduct the report, said in a press release after its release.
For the higher a part of a decade, advocates have been sounding the alarm about food insecurity on campus, urging colleges to open (or expand) food pantries to assist hungry students. Many have. As of 2022, greater than 800 colleges had food pantries, up from just 88 a decade earlier, in keeping with the nonprofit higher education group Trellis Company.
Still, food insecurity on campus stays prevalent. The GAO’s report found that 1 out of 4 college students are food insecure — defined as either not getting access to a top quality, varied food regimen; or in case of “very low food security,” entirely skipping meals as a consequence of lack of cash.
The SNAP conundrum for school students
SNAP is a federal program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and administered by each state. States set their very own application rules, but generally applicants have to be low-income and meet specific work requirements.
For school students, the eligibility requirements are particularly onerous. To receive SNAP advantages while in college, the coed have to be enrolled in a higher-education program at the very least part-time and work 20 hours per week or more (unless they’re parents of young children, have a qualifying disability or one other similar exemption).
While about 20% of all college students likely meet these requirements, a big majority of them never make it through the SNAP application process. They might not realize they qualify, aren’t capable of complete the appliance or produce other barriers to receiving the profit.
When students don’t have access to the food they need, their academic performance can suffer.
“Food insecurity during college is a barrier to graduation and higher-degree attainment,” wrote food-insecurity researchers in a 2022 study published by Public Health Nutrition.
The study found that over 56% of food-insecure college students find yourself dropping out.
“Worrying about not having enough to eat, where your next meal is coming from, going hungry, or sacrificing the dietary content of food can distract students from specializing in school work thereby resulting in lower academic performance,” the authors wrote.
And in the event that they did manage to graduate, it tended to be from an associate’s degree program — not a bachelor’s or graduate program.
One other major factor that contributes to food-insecure students’ disproportionately high dropout rates, the study found, is that those students usually tend to be working to support themselves.
Separate research from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce has long demonstrated that there are academic downsides when students work an excessive amount of.
“Working too many hours — above the 15-hour threshold per week — can even result in a better probability of non-completion and dropping out for low-income students,” the researchers said.
SNAP work requirements of at the very least 20 hours per week while maintaining enrollment are at odds with that threshold.
This all coalesces right into a grim reality for a lot of food-insecure college students: Don’t enroll in SNAP and risk dropping out as a consequence of hunger; or, enroll in SNAP and risk dropping out to do being overworked.
“If we add that to student loan debt incurred from trying and failing to finish a credential,” the Georgetown researchers wrote, “a few of these students were possibly worse off for having tried.”
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