Anabel’s Grocery at Cornell University addresses basic needs insecurity for students.
Jason Koski, Cornell University
College students are more likely to experience food insecurity, compared to the general population, but funding and support for programs that address basic needs in higher education remains limited.
A 2024 survey by Swipe Out Hunger, a nonprofit group that addresses hunger among college students, found while a majority of colleges have a pantry for student supports, most are supported by philanthropy and not the institution.
The campus leader survey, released last month, included responses from 347 of Swipe’s 850 partner campuses, representing over 766,600 students who engaged with basic needs resources, whether through the food pantry, SNAP enrollment program or a basic needs hub.
The most popular campus support program was a food pantry, with almost all respondents (95 percent) indicating their college offers one for students. In 2024, campus pantries distributed over eight million meals and 687,000 additional items, such as toiletries, diapers or appliance lending.
Campus leaders shared their primary win in the past year was expanding their program (56 percent) and supporting students (20 percent), but only 1 percent of respondents said they had administrative support, and 8 percent indicated they earned additional funding to aid expansion.
In a similar vein, when asked what their primary challenges were, the greatest share identified funding (47 percent), followed by staffing (16 percent), space (11 percent) and support (10 percent).
Two in five campuses identified donations as their primary funding source, which included staff payroll deductions and crowdsourcing. Only 5 percent of campus leaders said they had a dedicated budget from campus as their primary source of funding for programming.
“This severe lack of sustainable funding for antihunger programs is preventing students from accessing the food they need to survive, which in turn affects their ability to stay enrolled,” says Jaime Hansen, executive director of Swipe Out Hunger. “With rising food costs and the lack of government support, campus food pantries and similar resources are becoming the only lifeline for students. If these programs continue to be overburdened and underfunded, we can expect to see less students being able to afford to stay in college.”
A corresponding student experience survey found 40 percent of program users engaged with on-campus services weekly, and an additional 8 percent used resources every day.
The top barriers to accessing nutritious food, students reported, were time constraints due to multiple responsibilities; the cost of meal plans, including on-campus food costs; anxiety about resource scarcity (taking away from peers who need it more); elevated costs of diet-specific foods; and living far away from affordable foods.
Tackling basic needs insecurity: Some of the ways other organizations and institutions are addressing college student hunger include these efforts:
- Believe in Students created an online curriculum to empower faculty to engage in basic needs support, providing relevant data and insights as well as how-to advice and encouragement.
- Community colleges utilize FAFSA data to notify learners of their eligibility for SNAP or other state-level food assistance programs.
- A group of students at Anne Arundel Community College contributed to a faculty-led cookbook featuring students’ nostalgic recipes adapted to utilize campus pantry ingredients.
- New Jersey built a centralized website to help college students identify basic needs resources across the state.
- Virginia Commonwealth University built miniature food pantries, modeled off little lending libraries, to increase access to shelf-safe food items across campus.
How is your campus addressing food insecurity among students? Tell us more.
