Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov. 3 2015
How Many College Students Are Going Hungry?
By Steve Kolowich
So when she arrived at Barnard, the women’s college affiliated with
Columbia University, Ms. Airaksinen suspected that some students would
be waging similar battles in the shadows of the elite university’s
Manhattan campus.
"Whether you’re at Columbia or you’re at a community college, there will
always be people struggling to make ends meet," says Ms. Airaksinen. And
when money gets tight, food is often first expense to go.
The sophomore was nevertheless struck by stories her classmates told:
passing out in academic buildings after skipping meals; eating cereal
three times a day; planning their schedules around when a local grocery
store sets out free cheese samples.
"They would say things like, Oh, I’m going to the Republicans’ club
meeting," says Ms. Airaksinen. "I would say, Wow, I didn’t know you were
a Republican. And they’d say, I’m not, they have free food there."
The cliche of the thrifty student who subsists on ramen noodles has
given way to a more troubling portrait: the hungry student who needs
help and may not know how to ask for it. Colleges, including wealthy
ones like Columbia, have only recently begun to understand how many
students on their campuses have trouble paying for food. As college
costs rise, institutional belts tighten, and more low-income and
first-generation students enroll, the cliché of the thrifty student who
subsists on ramen noodles has given way to a more troubling portrait:
the hungry student who needs help and may not know how to ask for it.
The earliest available study of "food insecurity" among college students
was published eight years ago at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.
Researchers found that 21 percent of students there struggled with food
insecurity, a term that refers to people who skip meals or don’t get
proper nutrition because they can’t afford it. A new study, focusing on
first-year students at Arizona State University, put the rate around 34
percent.
Studies on other campuses have yielded a range of figures, from 14
percent at the University of Alabama to 59 percent at Western Oregon
University.
Meg Bruening, an assistant professor of nutrition at Arizona State,
attributes the variation to differences in the sample populations. "I
don’t think we really have a good understanding of how big the problem
is," she says. In nearly every case, however, the rate of food
insecurity among students was much higher than the rates for the general
population.
‘There Is Stigma, There Is Shame’
Hunger often coincides with other problems that tend to get more
attention. In her study of first-year students, Ms. Bruening found that
those who couldn’t rely on regular meals also were more likely to suffer
from anxiety and depression. Other studies have tied food insecurity to
low-income households and unstable housing situations.
Like homelessness or mental-health issues, food insecurity is not always
easy to notice from the outside. When researchers at the City University
of New York surveyed more than a thousand undergraduates on 17 of its
campuses in 2010, 19 percent said they knew somebody at the university
who had food or hunger problems. In fact, nearly 40 percent of students
were food-insecure at some level.
One reason is that students tend not to talk about it. "At the end of
the day there is stigma, there is shame, even in the low-income,
first-generation community," says Ms. Airaksinen. Asking for help can be
embarrassing.
Debbie Diehm, an assistant to the vice president for student affairs at
Western Oregon, remembers years ago when a worried faculty member sent
her a student who evidently had been missing meals. Ms. Diehm offered to
help the student apply for a grant from the university’s student
emergency fund. But the application form, which required only a name and
a short explanation for the request, struck him as daunting.
"He said, ‘I just can’t do that,’" recalls Ms. Diehm. "Filling out a
one-page application for foundation dollars was too much for that person
to do, no matter what encouragement I gave."
Western Oregon’s student-affairs office has since started giving out
gift cards for local grocery stores, worth up to $100, to students who
seek help buying food. At CUNY, where only 6 percent of undergraduates
reported using food stamps despite the high rate of food insecurity,
officials on several campuses have offered to help students navigate the
sometimes complicated process of figuring out if they are eligible for
public assistance.
Student-Led Interventions
Many interventions have been led by students. At Western Oregon and
elsewhere, students run campus food pantries, stocked with donated
groceries and unused food from the dining halls, where their classmates
can shop free. Campus food banks are proliferating; the College and
University Food Bank Alliance now counts more than 200 members. Often
the banks are started by students, although college officials have
become increasingly interested in running them, according to Clare Cady,
director of the alliance.
At Columbia students are using technology to fight the problem. Last
spring undergraduates in a campus group dedicated to the needs of
first-generation and low-income students created a Facebook page called
"CU Meal Share," where Columbia students could volunteer to swipe their
classmates into dining halls. ("I can swipe people into Ferris tonight
at 6:30!" wrote one student in late October, referring to a campus
eatery.) This fall a pair of undergraduates unveiled a mobile app that
matches hungry students with nearby meal donors.
Occasional free meals can help, says Ms. Airaksinen, but ultimately she
sees the emergency meal fund as a "bandage solution." Officials have
been receptive to students' concerns about food insecurity, but the
Barnard sophomore has found it disheartening to watch her classmates
struggle to fulfill such a basic need.
"It is really frustrating to know that the university has so many
assets, so much capital, but to realize that they’re spending their
money on things like lawn care," says Ms. Airaksinen. "There’s just so
many different ways where money that could be directed toward this issue
is spent on other things."
Columbia officials pointed to the university’s generous financial aid,
as well as its many outreach and assistance programs for low-income and
first-generation students — including tutoring, stipends for unpaid
internships, and a closet in the career center where students can borrow
nice clothes for job interviews.
Beyond administering the emergency meal fund, officials have recently
tried spreading the word about an existing pool of money called the
"deans’ assistance fund." Low-income students can apply to that fund for
help in covering unexpected expenses such as medical bills, winter
coats, and meals during semester breaks, when the dining halls are closed.
One Problem Among Many
Colleges have been eager to lend a hand to hungry students, but some
have wrestled with the question of how to make the problem of food
insecurity a priority.
"It’s a hard thing for a university to acknowledge," says Nicholas
Freudenberg, a professor of public health at Hunter College who has led
CUNY’s research on food insecurity. "On the one hand, the evidence is
pretty good that hungry students learn less well."
On the other, institutions might not have the resources, or the mission,
to feed students in addition to teaching them, says Mr. Freudenberg. "It
means taking on one more task," he says. "So I think there’s been some
ambivalence about our findings and what to do about it."
Officials at CUNY are doing a follow-up study to find out how things
have changed since 2010. Mr. Freudenberg worries that the university’s
push to educate students about their eligibility for food stamps, which
has taken aim at six community colleges and one four-year institution in
the CUNY system, is not reaching enough students.
The consultations may be helping thousands of people on a handful of
campuses claim a spot on the public dole, he says, and the pantries
might help them get by in a pinch, but those measures probably haven’t
made much of a dent in the larger problem.
"We know it’s still a problem," says the professor. "It hasn’t gone away."
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