This guide describes how to perform two types of studies: • Surveys to assess basic needs security; and • Opportunistic small scale experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of programs meant to address basic needs security.
For the past several years, we have conducted research on hunger affecting college studentsacross the nation, and we thank you for the opportunity to share what we have learned. Our goalis to provide useful information about food insecurity among undergraduates and offer potential policy solutions to help alleviate this problem.We urge the National Commission on Hunger to align hunger policies with educational policies, in order to ensure that individuals from low-income and economically vulnerable backgrounds have a fair shot at mastering college-level material and securing college credentials.In particular, we recommend the following actions.
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.
Meeting Summary from the 2019 #RealCollege Conference
This report describes program implementation and impact of one of the nation’s first food
scholarship programs: the Houston Food Scholarship (HFS), a partnership between Houston
Community College and the Houston Food Bank. The food scholarship was first distributed in
January 2018, and this report examines its early stages, as well as rigorously estimating impacts
through spring 2019.
• This is the first-ever national survey of campus food pantries,
with 262 participating institutions, 217 of which currently
operate pantries.
• Most campus pantries have a designated space on campus,
serve exclusively the on-campus community, and are run by
staff, students, and faculty.
• Very few campus pantries have sizable budgets, but most
employ some paid staff, often undergraduate or graduate
students, and volunteers provide additional support.
• Awareness of campus pantries may be limited because
common outreach strategies are informal, but barriers to
support are low—just 5% of campus pantries require proof
of financial need.
• The most common challenges faced by camp