Document Tag: data

No Food for Thought: Insights on Basic Needs Insecurities and Mental Health Challenges from Trellis’ Fall 2020 Student Financial Wellness Survey (2022)

More than half of students were experiencing one or more basic need insecurities at the time of the survey—50 percent of four- year students and 54 percent of two-year students. • Nearly one in ten students— nine percent—had experienced homelessness, food insecurity, and housing insecurity within the past year (from October/November 2019 to October/November 2020). • The majority of respondents with BNI reported the COVID-19 outbreak had added to their levels of stress, anxiety, or depression— 89 percent at two-year colleges and 92 percent at four-year institutions. • Respondents with demonstrated basic needs insecurities were more likely to work while enrolled, identify as a first-generation student, be female, and financially support children or other dependents.

Food Insecurity and Homelessness in American Higher Education: An Overview of New Nationally Representative Estimates (2023)

UPDATE: New version amended with additional table (July 30, 2023)

This memo offers new nationally representative estimates of food insecurity and homelessness affecting the nation’s college students, obtained from the just-released National Postsecondary Student Aid Study: 2020 (NPSAS), and compares them to estimates from my prior research studies conducted at The Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice.

The results confirm that a sizable number of the nation’s college students—including graduate students—are food insecure and some are homeless. As long suspected, the rate is higher for college students than for the broader public. Moreover, we can now see that basic needs insecurity is a problem at every type of college and university and cuts across student demographics and even traditional measures of income and financial need.

● 23% of undergraduates and 12% of graduate students experienced food insecurity.
● 8% of undergraduates and 5% of graduate students experienced homelessness.
● Basic needs insecurity affects 35% of Black/African American students, 30% of Native American students, and 25% of Hispanic students.
● For-profit colleges and universities and Historically Black Colleges and Universities have the highest rates of basic needs insecurity among their students.

The coalition of institutions willing to assess and address these problems had higher rates of the challenges— now that all institutions are included the averages are lower, yet still substantial. We owe a debt of gratitude to those brave institutions that led the way and convinced the federal government to count what matters most to students – the security of their basic needs.

Request to Add Measurement of Food Insecurity to the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (2015)

The Wisconsin HOPE Lab and the American Council on Education Center for Policy Research and Strategy strongly urge the Technical Review Panel of NCES’s NPSAS study to add measurement of food insecurity to the next administration of this key national survey. This will provide policymakers with information required to assess the efficacy of Federal Student Aid in alleviating material hardships and consider the need for new programs to alleviate hunger among undergraduates, assist practitioners in examining how affordable college really is for their students, and enable researchers to produce a more accurate picture of the economic challenges inhibiting college completion.

Below, we describe the rationale for this request and proposed survey questions, drawn from standardized models of assessment that will enable comparisons with national statistics on food insecurity in the broader population.