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.

 

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