One in Four U.S. Undergrads Experience Food Insecurity, Study Finds

Food insecurity is a pressing issues across all demographic groups but college students are often overlooked when it comes to the impact of hunger and lack of proper nutrition. A new national study from Katharine Broton, Associate Professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs at the University of Iowa, offers a rare national snapshot of the depth of the problem. Spotlight spoke recently with Broton about the study; the transcript of that conversation was lightly edited for length and clarity.

Sure. The challenge of food insecurity and material hardship among college students is increasingly visible. I’ve been doing this work for about 15 years, since I was a graduate student, and when I got into this area of research, there was a lot of pushback from folks who were not on the ground working with college students, or maybe only working with elite college students, saying that they weren’t sure if this was really a problem. This didn’t necessarily match their experience of when they were in college—there were folks saying things like, “I worked my way through college. What’s the deal with students today?”

But in fact, when you start running the numbers for folks, it becomes very clear that you can no longer work your way through college through part-time and summer jobs the way that prior generations did. When you look at the full cost of college attendance, even at public colleges, you find that students today are making really hard choices. Do I buy this textbook? Do I skip a meal? We have students who are experiencing homelessness or being unhoused, and you find that this isn’t an issue that’s affecting just a very small minority of students.

In this latest piece, we’re looking at food insecurity in particular, which is you’re not getting enough food or not getting enough sufficient nutrition due to resource limitations. We have new, nationally representative data that was collected in 2020, and this is really exciting because we’ve been kind of having these small samples for years. What’s happening in this state? What’s happening in this college system? What’s happening in this collection of schools? This is the first time we have nationally represented data that is representative of the experiences of undergraduates and graduate students across the U.S. and in Puerto Rico and D.C. And we’re finding that roughly about one in four undergraduates and one in eight graduate students experienced food insecurity in the past month.

Did that figure surprise you?

It didn’t surprise me because I’ve been doing this work for a long time. But I think it does surprise people who are not necessarily tapped into this area of work.

And Katie, is this four-year colleges only, or does this include community colleges?

It includes community colleges. In fact, we see the highest rates of food insecurity in our for-profit sector, which is not surprising given the types of students that are sought after by the for-profit higher education sector.

And were the rates generally in two-year colleges or community colleges higher than in four-year institutions?

We don’t break it down for two-year and four-year but just for public, private and for-profit.

And this would’ve been during the pandemic, correct?

At the very onset of the pandemic. So, it is representative of students who were enrolled in that 2019-2020 school year. The survey went to field in spring 2020, just as the pandemic hit. As you can imagine, after advocating for the U.S. government to add these measures to their nationally representative survey that they do every four years, to have it hit during the pandemic year was less than ideal. Although we know that all cross-sectional, point-in-time estimates are products of their context, it’s a little unclear how that affects the rates.

But this would have been prior to any of the additional aid programs coming into effect, correct?

Exactly. The most vulnerable students may have left, so it’s a little unclear how it changed the population of college students at that time.

Are there any other demographic or any other breakdowns that you want to highlight?

Certainly, we know that in society writ large and among our college student population that food insecurity and other types of material hardship are not evenly distributed across the population. There is increased likelihood among groups in ways that you would imagine if you study history and the structure and organization of the United States. In this study, we’re showing that our students from lowest income families, women students, students of color, students who identify as LGBTQ students, as well as students who identify as having a disability were more likely to say that they were struggling with food insecurity than their peers.

And did you include by chance in the survey whether any of these students were accessing benefits or did you not get into that?

The great thing about the paper that we’re talking about today is that it uses a national survey that the U.S. Department of Education does, the National Post-Secondary Student Aid survey. That survey has a wealth of information. It is an invaluable public resource. And part of what I’m hoping to do with this work is to put a spotlight on that data source. The analysis that we ran for this brief are all from publicly available data, so there are so many opportunities for analysts and scholars to pick up this public data source and run any number of analyses. And I really hope that’s something that will come from this.

Are there any interesting programs at the state level that you’re watching in terms of dealing with this issue.

States are taking a number of different approaches. Some states have dedicated resources and funding to fighting basic food insecurity on their college campuses. They’ve done that in different ways, depending upon the state. But certainly, putting money into emergency responses, things like pantries and meal vouchers and emergency grant aid, is one way that’s also being done at the institutional level or at systems level. I think most of the action is a little bit more local.

There’s a number of different levers that could be pulled, depending upon where you sit and what resources are available. So, you think about something like the Pell Grant, which is already in place, and we know that students from our low-income families are more likely to experience food insecurity. If we increase the size of the Pell Grant, for example, that could help with alleviating that hardship.

For example, we have a free and reduced-price lunch and breakfast system in the United States. Those very same kids all of a sudden, the next year, get into higher education, and we don’t have something like that. And we know who they are. The Pell Grant program does a pretty good job of finding them. I have experimental research showing that when we offer meal vouchers to community college students who are at high risk of food insecurity, it increases their academic attainment, and they are more likely to graduate.

There’s a number of things happening on the ground but some of my latest research shows that we’re still just not meeting the need. I have a paper showing that at one university, about one in 10 students are accessing the basic needs resources that are available. I have another paper coming out early this year about community college students. And on that survey, they asked them, “Hey, are you having trouble getting enough to eat? Do you have these food challenges? And if so, are you getting help from your college to help you with those food needs?” And of those who said, yes, I’m having trouble, yes, I need help, about four out of 10 were getting support from their institutions. So, less than half. I think the need goes well beyond what’s available.

And is there anything in the changes to SNAP that are coming from last year’s budget bill that would impact college students in particular?

I don’t know the answer to the changes of the budget bill off the top of my head. I will say that it’s very hard for college students to access SNAP. They have to meet the standard income and asset criteria plus additional criteria on top of that, such as being a parent. There’s a lot of confusion around SNAP eligibility for college students. The GAO has run an analysis, and they know that just a minority of students who they believe are eligible for SNAP are accessing that resource in large part due to lack of awareness and stigma. That’s’ another great example of something that we have in place that could be changed and streamlined to serve this population in particular.

If we can give this population support in the short term, for a few years, we know that the odds of them being employed, of making a living wage, of having health insurance, of being an active participant in their community, goes way up. That’s why you are seeing institutions invest in this area, because they’re seeing a return in retention and in graduation rates. It’s really getting folks in a positive feedback cycle.