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Federal food assistance benefits known as SNAP give low-income individuals money to pay for food. But college students who are food insecure struggle to access the program.
Two-thirds of the 3.3 million college students eligible for federal food assistance in 2020 didn’t access it, the Government Accountability Office found in a report released Wednesday.
Requested by Democratic lawmakers in 2021, the report comes as Congress is in the midst of updating the Farm Bill, a sprawling piece of legislation that sets policy for agriculture and nutrition programs, and it offers new insights about food insecurity among college students and access to the federal food assistance program known as SNAP. Over the years, advocates have pushed Congress to make SNAP easier for college students to access. The need is certainly there: About 23 percent of college students reported experiencing food insecurity per the report, which analyzed federal data released last year.
For advocates, the GAO findings highlight why changes are necessary—as well as the need for colleges to reach out to students who are potentially eligible for SNAP and ensure they are aware of their benefits.
“This reinforces the brokenness of the SNAP student rules, and the need for deep reform in the rules, and sort of rewriting other rules,” said Mark Huelsman, director of policy at the Hope Center for College, Community and Justice at Temple University. “If two-thirds of potentially eligible students are not receiving benefits, the eligibility criteria and the outreach and really every piece of the system needs to be fundamentally rethought.”
Currently, college students enrolled at least half-time have to meet other eligibility criteria, including being a single parent or having a disability, to receive SNAP. They also have to satisfy the program’s income and citizenship eligibility requirements. Recipients in a single-person household can’t have a net income of more than $1,580 a month and be eligible, for instance.
Virginia representative Bobby Scott, the senior Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee, who requested the GAO study, told Inside Higher Ed in a statement that the report affirms that “too many college students are unable to escape hunger as they pursue their educational goals,” noting that research has shown food insecurity can negatively affect students’ academic outcomes.
“Congress must ensure that students who are eligible for SNAP benefits have access to these benefits and that colleges are proactively informing students of the benefits available to them,” Scott said. “As the cost of attending college continues to rise, Congress can and should do more to support food-insecure students and provide them with the resources they need to graduate.”
This report is the first of two GAO studies on food insecurity that are in the works. The second one will outline barriers and challenges that students face in accessing SNAP, a Democratic aide said.
Huelsman said that previous studies and surveys of food insecurity among college students have shown that the problem is “vast and substantial.” The new study, he said, offers greater details about students who are eligible for SNAP and which populations are affected by food insecurity.
Nearly four million students have experienced food insecurity, and half of those had very low food security, according to the report. That means they have had “multiple instances of eating less than they should or skipping meals because they could not afford enough food.” About 80 percent of food-insecure students are considered nontraditional, meaning they are financially independent from their parents, didn’t immediately enroll in college after high school or care for a dependent.
About half of those who reported experiencing food insecurity were from low-income households. Roughly 31 percent of recipients of a Pell Grant in 2022 said they were food insecure. For Huelsman, the Pell Grant statistic shows the “insufficiency of federal financial aid.”
“Pell and need-based financial aid is not meeting the moment for addressing the basic needs of students,” he added.
SNAP provides low-income individuals with money to pay for food, but college students have to meet a set of complicated criteria in order to even access that benefit. The GAO estimated that 40 percent of food- insecure students might be eligible for SNAP, but they aren’t taking advantage of it. About 59 percent of those who were food insecure and eligible reported receiving no SNAP benefits.
The GAO conducted a similar analysis of 2016 data in 2018 and found that fewer potentially eligible students—57 percent—weren’t accessing SNAP. In this latest report, that number increased to 67 percent. That 10-percentage-point jump stood out to Carrie Welton, senior director of policy and advocacy at the Institute for College Access and Success.
“I’m just unsurprised and astounded that in just a couple of years, that number is now almost 70 percent who were potentially eligible but not receiving SNAP,” Welton said. “And it really for me and for TICAS particularly underscores the need to modernize the Farm Bill to reflect that people want education and employers increasingly demand it.”
Welton and others have argued that the eligibility requirements for SNAP make it difficult for students to pursue a postsecondary education and access food assistance. College students enrolled more than half-time generally are excluded from SNAP unless they qualify for an exemption such as one for working 20 hours or more per week.
The stigma associated with applying for federal food stamps and the complexity of the program’s eligibility requirements could be deterring students from seeking out SNAP, Welton said.
Advocacy and higher education groups have argued that colleges should use federal financial aid data to identify students who might be eligible for SNAP and then proactively reach out to those individuals. The Education Department released guidance in 2022 outlining how colleges could use that data to inform students of the federal benefits and assistance they might be eligible for.
“When more than half of food-insecure students potentially eligible for public assistance do not report receiving SNAP, it’s likely an awareness issue more than student hesitation to apply,” said Tanya Ang, executive director of the Today’s Students Coalition, which advocates for policy changes that better serve students. “Although ED has issued guidance to colleges addressing how FAFSA data could be used to inform students of their potential eligibility for means-tested benefits, including direct outreach, most institutions face resource constraints or report concerns about follow-up questions they’re unable to answer as their biggest hurdles in implementing the department’s guidance.”
Huelsman said that boosting awareness of SNAP benefits doesn’t require Congress to pass a Farm Bill or take any other action. Higher education “can do a much better job” of connecting students to the benefits they are eligible for,” he said.
“There is a ton of existing opportunity to do that without changing the rules to ensure that more students are receiving aid that would potentially keep them enrolled.”
