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The Government Accountability Office is urging the Education and Agriculture Departments to better coordinate their efforts to connect students with SNAP benefits.
A new Government Accountability Office report concludes that the Education and Agriculture Departments should be doing more to ensure college students receive federal food assistance. Despite reforms, too few students are notified they could be eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
For instance, the GAO found that the Education Department’s plan to notify students about food assistance programs misses about 40 percent of those eligible for the aid.
The report, released Thursday, partly blames faulty communication and data sharing between the Education Department, the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, colleges, and state agencies.
“It’s crucial that ED and USDA collaborate effectively, so that all eligible students can access the resources they need to thrive,” Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement. (He also emphasized that for the Education Department to help students, it has to remain intact.)
To reach its conclusions, the GAO interviewed officials at both federal agencies and at colleges and SNAP offices in California, Massachusetts and Washington, states actively working on student outreach, to learn more about students’ access to SNAP benefits. The report also based its findings on interviews with members of multiple higher education associations and an analysis of data from the Education Department’s 2020 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study. The audit took place between May 2023 and February 2025.
‘Gaps in Planning and Execution’
The report pointed out that the Education Department and USDA have new legal avenues to help students obtain SNAP benefits.
The FAFSA Simplification Act, which passed in 2020 and included provisions related to student outreach that took effect last summer, requires the Education Department to notify low-income students of federal benefits, like SNAP, based on their Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The law also allows the Education Department to share FAFSA data with the USDA and state SNAP agencies to reach out to potentially eligible students and streamline their enrollment in the program.
The report commended the two federal agencies for taking steps to connect students with SNAP benefits, including a memorandum of understanding in September 2024 with commitments from both agencies to take action on student access to SNAP. Notably, the Department of Education agreed to send out annual emails with information about SNAP to colleges and potentially eligible low-income students, sending emails to approximately eight million students in November 2024.
“But gaps in planning and execution remain,” according to the report.
The GAO accused the Education Department of initially offering insufficient guidance as to how data sharing would work, leaving colleges and state higher ed agencies in the dark.
In a December 2023 survey, 11 out of 19 state higher ed agency officials said it was unclear to them whether organizations could use student data for SNAP outreach, 15 out of 19 weren’t sure if they needed students’ consent to use certain data, and 12 out of 19 didn’t know which rules applied to which data sources. A 2023 survey of colleges by the Higher Learning Advocates and the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators similarly found that fewer than a quarter of 182 colleges did outreach to students about federal benefits because of worries they’d incorrectly use FAFSA data. The department later provided more clear guidance.
The GAO also found that there still isn’t a clear, written process in place for data sharing between the Education Department and other federal and state SNAP agencies. The process involves obtaining student consent and establishing individual data-sharing agreements with each agency that administers benefits, according to department officials, but the details remain hazy.
“While officials told us they intend to move forward with sharing FAFSA data with other agencies, Education does not have a formal plan in place for how it would implement this effort, nor has the agency estimated a timeframe for when it would begin sharing data,” the report noted. “This could lead to delays in vulnerable college students getting information that could help them access food and benefits they are eligible for.”
The GAO also identified flaws in the Education Department’s system for notifying students about SNAP benefits.
As of November 2024, students eligible for Pell Grants who report their households receive at least one federal benefit automatically get a notification on their FAFSA submission page about other federal benefit programs with a link to more information. But the GAO’s analysis of Education Department data found that an estimated 40 percent of students who could be eligible for SNAP don’t meet both criteria. For example, some Pell-eligible students don’t apply for federal benefits, and graduate students may be eligible for SNAP but can’t receive Pell Grants. The GAO critiqued the department for not consulting with the USDA or other agencies on its approach.
The report also doesn’t let the USDA off the hook. The GAO argued that the USDA urged state SNAP agencies to target outreach to students but, like the Education Department, left out key details in its guidance, creating “areas of ambiguity.” College and state SNAP agency officials reported to the GAO that they weren’t sure if or when they could access or use students’ SNAP data and had trouble getting their questions answered at the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service regional offices.
“Without clear guidance on using and sharing SNAP data for student outreach and application assistance, states and colleges could inconsistently and inaccurately interpret what is allowable,” the report stated. “This could lead to missed opportunities for informing outreach and application efforts or some unintentionally engaging in noncompliance.”
What’s Next
The report offered a series of recommendations to the Education Department and the USDA to improve their work on behalf of students.
Notably, the GAO urged the education secretary to write up a formal plan for sharing FAFSA data with SNAP administrators, consult with the USDA to evaluate its system for notifying potentially SNAP-eligible students and better inform colleges and state SNAP agencies about the notification system. The USDA was also tasked with issuing better, more updated guidance to state SNAP agencies, in partnership with the Education Department, to clarify how student data can be used in outreach.
The GAO asserted that the stakes are high if these processes don’t improve.
“In fiscal year 2023, the U.S. Department of Education spent approximately $31.4 billion dollars [sic] on Pell Grants to help over 6 million students with financial need attend college,” the report read. “This substantial federal investment in higher education is at risk of not serving its intended purpose if college students drop out because of limited or uncertain access to food.”
