By: Catherine Brown, Senior Director of Policy and Advocacy
Reading time: 3 min.
Food insecurity among college students is a pervasive problem, disproportionately impacting students who are Pell eligible, first generation, and/or BIPOC. NCAN hosted a webinar on July 21 to highlight California leaders’ proactive and intensive effort to tackle student hunger.
During the webinar, Marlene Garcia, Executive Director of the California State Aid Commission, the body that administers California’s state financial aid programs, described one clear cause of this problem: while 250,000 K-12 students receiving free and reduced-price meals moved to postsecondary education in 2019, only 127,000 received Cal Fresh (SNAP) benefits. This gap underscores the substantial unmet need for food assistance among college students. Nolan Sullivan, Director of the Health and Human Services Agency in Yolo County, California, home to UC Davis, and a speaker on the webinar, refers to CalFresh as “financial aid for food.” CalFresh provides an average monthly household benefit of $299, or $2,990 throughout an academic year.
To determine how to help more college students access CalFresh, CSAC launched a workgroup consisting of stakeholders from across the state. Catalina Cifuentes, CSAC chair and NCAN board member, served on the workgroup. They found that “lack of outreach to inform students of the CalFresh program and… outdated communication tools leave most of our students stranded,” and identified the following barriers to access:
1. Students lack awareness of the program
2. Students lack easy access to the required documents 3. In-person interviews are incompatible with students’ schedules and transportation options 4. The verification process for students is onerous 5. On-campus stores don’t accept electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards 6. Students lose benefits if they don’t recertify frequently
The workgroup also developed a suite of recommendations to break down these barriers. They include:
1. Provide presumptive eligibility for students with a zero EFC (expected family contribution) on the FAFSA, those who participated in the free and reduced-price meal program in K-12, or those who come from households that receive SNAP benefits 2. Pre-populate the CalFresh application form using data from the FAFSA 3. Eliminate the interview and the 6- month recertification process and use FAFSA data to verify eligibility annually 4. Direct campus food service venues to accept EBT cards 5. Streamline the eligibility requirements and allow for cross-county data sharing to better assist students who move across county lines to go to college
The report is chock full of clear and actionable recommendations for helping more students access food assistance. It offers short-term ideas as well as systemic changes that require administrative and legislative adjustments. We encourage you to read the report and use the ideas that make sense in your context.
Perhaps most importantly, all three webinar speakers emphasized the importance of relationships in this work and the need to “find your Nolan.” Through close coordination between Nolan, his team at the county HHS office and administrators in local colleges, the number of students receiving CalFresh grew dramatically. Today, Yolo County ranks first in the state. Finding the right people – those who want to work proactively and flexibly to meet the needs of students – can make magic happen.
Finally, all three speakers urged NCAN members to engage with federal policymakers to expand SNAP eligibility for college students. In December 2020, Congress temporarily expanded SNAP eligibility to students who qualify for work-study or have zero EFC. This change will remain in effect until the federal state of emergency for COVID is lifted. NCAN has endorsed the EATS Act which would make the December 2020 expansion permanent.
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