Feb 13, 2021 3 min read

It’s easy to think that the much-joked-about affection college students have for ramen noodles is based on convenience, a lack of cooking skills and maybe a shortage of pocket change, but nothing that would truly qualify as destitution.

Taking it a step further, it’s easy to think that a little dose of undergraduate poverty might provide a healthy learning experience, or just be a brief, harmless way station on the road to professional accomplishment and middle-class affluence.

The reality, though, is that there are many more college students who are dealing every day with real privation, and it’s nothing that should be romanticized. According to a study released in 2019 by Temple University, 45% of students at community colleges and public colleges and universities reported that they were food insecure. Basically, the definition of “food insecurity” is not being entirely sure where your next meal is going to come from.

The situation has undoubtedly become more dire in the last year, as the coronavirus has prevented students from working part-time or full-time jobs. As it does for students in primary and secondary settings, hunger impedes their ability to learn and hinders their ability to complete their education and graduate. This includes many first-generation and low-income college students, as well as students of color.

For this reason, the Wolf administration announced last week that some Pennsylvania college students will qualify for benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) until 30 days after the public health emergency that’s been declared due to the pandemic has ended. Now, students who have no family contribution to their college costs and qualify for state or federal work study programs can receive SNAP benefits, which many Americans more commonly know as “food stamps.”

Thanks to this rule change, families that have a college student under the age of 22 living at home will receive additional SNAP benefits. Those students were not eligible previously. And it’s worth noting that, even before the pandemic, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report found that some college students who qualified for SNAP benefits did not receive them – in fact, as many as half of the students who were potentially eligible did without them.

It’s important to keep in mind that the students we think of as “typical” undergraduates – those who have gone straight to college after high school and are being supported by their parents – are not that typical. They only constitute 29% of all college students. The rest are working their way through school, are older, have dependent children and take more than four years to get their degrees.

Once the dust settles from the pandemic, many of the social and economic arrangements that were in place before last March are bound to be reconsidered. College costs need to come down, and that’s been the case for a long time. Along with that, financial aid needs to be rethought. The number of students fighting hunger shows it needs to go beyond just tuition and room and board.