More US students hungry at vocational schools than other types of colleges

03 Aug 2017 --- A recent study has shown that for some US students, hunger is a serious challenge and can impede their ability to succeed in college.

At two-year colleges and vocational schools, food insecurity is a serious problem, according to University of Illinois (U of I) agricultural economist Craig Gundersen. “The data show students who attend these schools are generally from poorer households,” he says. “They don’t have to live on campus in dorms with required meal plans in dining halls. In fact, they are more likely to be still living at home with their parents. If their parents are food insecure, then so are they.

“There is also a greater percentage of students at two-year and vocational schools who are going back to school later. They are perhaps 25 years old and already heads of their own households, working to pay for their own tuition as well as their own family’s needs.”

This is not a universal problem in higher education. “Consistent with what most people probably believe intuitively, food insecurity is not a major issue at elite four-year campuses,” says Gundersen. “For example, here at Illinois, the median family income is US$109,000 and only 6.1 percent of the entire student body are from the bottom twentieth percentile of national income levels. In fact, over half of the students at U of I come from the top 20 percent. I don’t mean to say that none of the students at U of I has this problem, but it is quite rare.”

Gundersen believes that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) is the best social safety net helping to combat food insecurity in the US. In Gundersen’s view, this effort should be extended to college students, especially community college students.

“Nearly one in five two-year college students live in a food-insecure household, but eligibility and take-up rates among college-age students are low,” Gundersen says. “Policy makers may want to consider lowering the minimum number of off-campus work hours that are necessary for otherwise-eligible students to receive SNAP benefits.”

Gundersen says previous studies on this topic surveyed college students visiting food pantries and through voluntary online surveys. Therefore, not surprisingly, those studies found much higher percentages of students, as high as 60 percent, being food insecure on four-year campuses. 

“With a rigorous study like the one my colleagues and I conducted, the numbers are not as dramatic, but they are more descriptive of what’s actually going on,” Gundersen says. “Some 13 percent of college students at four-year schools are food insecure, which mirrors the national average of the entire population. And 21 percent of students in two-year and vocational schools are food insecure. These data tell a more complete story.”

Data from the October and December supplements to the Current Population Survey were used by Gundersen and his colleagues for this study. The Current Population Survey is conducted by the Census Bureau and gathers information from questionnaires from approximately 60,000 households nationwide. The October supplement includes questions about education and members of the household who are enrolled in school, while the December supplement asks questions about SNAP benefits and food insecurity.

Gundersen adds that people on four-year campuses who are really struggling with food insecurity are not the students: “It’s the people cleaning up after our students, cooking and serving food in the dining halls. Those are the people with low incomes who are at severe danger of food insecurity and have high rates of food insecurity.”

The study, “Assessing food insecurity on campus: A national look at food insecurity among America’s college students,” is written by Kristin Blagg, Craig Gundersen, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, and James P. Ziliak. It is published online by the Urban Institute. This report was funded in part by the Lumina Foundation and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.