‘I can’t afford groceries’: why one-third of US college students don’t have enough to eat

There are now around 800 food pantries on US college campuses, and demand is growing as pandemic-era resources end

For Anthony Meng, a senior at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, food insecurity can take on many different forms. On some days, it means skipping meals as he’s rushing to work or to class. On others, “it’s like, I don’t think I can afford groceries,” he said. “Which is difficult to say at times, but it’s the reality of the situation.”

Meng, 22, rolls out of bed every morning around 9 or 10am. His schedule is typically packed with back-to-back lectures and extracurriculars. More often than not, Meng finds himself heading out for the day with just a granola bar in hand, if anything at all.

Fortunately there’s a place on campus where he can seek refuge: the Food Resource Center, a beloved hangout where students and staff can stock up on free fresh produce and groceries. Funded by donations, grants and student fees, the center also offers prepared meals, microwaves to heat them up in, and couches and a TV for people to gather, eat and pass the time.

“It’s an area of campus where I can not only find solace,” Meng said. “The fact that I can go get a hot meal […] it means the whole world.”

Shelves are stocked with food and supplies inside the Food Resource Center at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The center serves as a community space where students and faculty can access free food with no questions asked. Photograph: Brooklynn T Kascel/The Guardian

Pantries like the Food Resource Center are an increasingly popular resource as food insecurity persists among college students. Recent estimates put the number of campus pantries at about 800, most of them established in the past decade.

According to a 2020 survey of more than 195,000 students across the country, conducted by the Hope Center at Temple University, nearly 30% of students at four-year colleges reported experiencing food insecurity. For those at two-year colleges, the number was even higher – almost 40%. And with changes to student eligibility requirements for federally funded hunger relief programs set to take place in May, advocates say the situation could get even worse.

Most Hamline students, including Meng, plan their visits to the Food Resource Center around its delivery days – Wednesdays and Fridays. After the food donation trucks pull away, the center’s aisles start to brim with a medley of staples and unexpected treats, from perfectly fine produce to an array of unsold Trader Joe’s snacks.

For the past two years, Meng has received no financial assistance from his family to cover tuition or rent, so he works at H&M on weekends to pay for school and basic needs. The ability to get food on campus at no cost, with no questions asked, means that it’s just a little bit easier to focus on simply being a student.

Anthony Meng at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Meng, a senior undergraduate student at Hamline, is a Food Access Student Coordinator at the Food Resource Center where students and staff can access free food. Photograph: Brooklynn T Kascel/The Guardian

Meng’s go-tos include fresh fruits, eggs and ingredients for Khmer cuisine like fish sauce and coconut milk. He will also grab a prepared meal to eat later, after the long dance rehearsals that take up the rest of the afternoon. For students who can’t make it to the center in person, there’s a grocery delivery service. During Ramadan, the center extended its hours to 9pm so observant Muslim students could grab something to eat after breaking their fasts.

Despite high rates of hunger, students face an uphill battle when trying to access the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), the federally funded hunger relief program that gives people monthly allowances for groceries. Since the 1980s, people who attend school on a more than part-time basis have been largely excluded from Snap, out of concern that students from well-to-do backgrounds would draw public resources instead of assistance from their families.

So instead of qualifying for Snap based on asset and income requirements – as the majority of Americans do – college students also need to work at least 20 hours a week, a requirement that anti-hunger advocates say is onerous and unreasonable for someone who is attending classes and doing school work every day. Advocates argue that strict eligibility rules for full-time students are based on antiquated ideas of who attends higher education. In the decades since these restrictions were put in place, the proportion of post-secondary students from low-income backgrounds has increased steadily. According to a 2019 Pew Research study, the number of undergraduate students from families in poverty was about 20% , representing a more than 50% jump in the prior two decades.

Yet despite the evolving profile of “typical” college students, lawmakers have done little to update Snap eligibility rules to reflect their current economic realities.

Kyler Daniels, 27, brings in groceries with her daughter, Nova, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina on 26 April. Daniels, who is pursuing a master’s degree in social work and works full time, is anticipating losing additional pandemic-era Snap benefits. Photograph: Rachel Jessen/The Guardian

Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government temporarily lifted the 20-hour work requirement for students. But after the public health emergency declaration expired in May, Snap rules will soon revert to pre-pandemic standards. According to one study, pandemic Snap exemptions for students made an additional 3 million people eligible to enroll in the program than would not have otherwise. Now, many of them will find themselves without grocery money that they’ve grown to depend on for three years.

“Oftentimes, the general public thinks of college students as that 18- or 19-year-old who’s continuing their education from high school,” said Jaime Hansen, executive director of Swipe Out Hunger, which advocates for policies to alleviate food insecurity among college students. “That’s no longer the majority.”

Still, the archetype of the typical college student who can draw from family resources and devote all their time to school persists.

Kyler Daniels, a 27-year-old mother and student knows this intimately. Daniels lives in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, with her daughter and boyfriend. While pursuing a master’s degree in social work part-time and remotely, she also works a full-time job at a local non-profit that supports children.

As a parent, food security is always at the top of her mind. Her family relies on food stamps, but when we spoke in March, she was bracing for them to get cut after the recent elimination of extra pandemic benefits. She supplements grocery store hauls with food boxes from a local church, or occasional free food at work. She tries to feed her daughter fresh fruits and vegetables when possible, while also trying not to overspend.

Kyler Daniels, 27, outside her home with four-year-old daughter, Nova, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Photograph: Rachel Jessen/The Guardian

Daniels says she regularly faces a lack of empathy from professors and administrators about the challenges of balancing education with parenthood and a career. Situations like hers are often perceived as unusual or abnormal, she said, and she often encounters resistance when asking for accommodations that help her balance being a mom and a worker, as well.

“Moms, families, just individuals who have other things outside of going to school – I just wish people will be more considerate of that,” she said.

In the past decades, researchers have uncovered countless ways that hunger is detrimental to academic performance: it can impair student focus; it can lead to poor mental health, and serve as a strong predictor of depression and anxiety; and it can even get in the way of students graduating and getting their degrees at all.

Meng at Hamline isn’t enrolled in Snap, but knows many peers who are already bracing for the end of their benefits. At some campus food pantries, there have been worrisome hints in recent months that food insecurity is already on the rise.

Alex Silver, 21, is the student director of the food pantry at the University of Washington. In the fall quarter of 2022, the pantry saw over 3,600 visits – more than double the demand during the same window back in 2019. Part of this can be attributed to increased outreach and marketing. Nonetheless, Silver notes the pantry itself is struggling to keep up with the rapid increase in demand.

In February, the pantry saw more than 400 visits in a single week, a threshold it hadn’t hit before. Squeezed by high needs and high costs, the pantry has had to laser in on how it spends funding, which all comes from donations. The pantry’s canned foods used to include Spam, beets and carrots. Now that’s been replaced by rows and rows of canned corn. Previously, it was able to offer basic hygiene items, like toilet paper, shampoo and tampons in addition to groceries – those are all gone, too. To ensure that shelves don’t go empty as soon as the pantry opens, food has to be rationed out on a points-based system that considers each item’s caloric value and nutritional profile.

Kyler Daniels, 27, opens a ukulele her mother bought for Daniels’ daughter, Nova, at their home. Photograph: Rachel Jessen/The Guardian

“[People] are not just coming for themselves, but maybe their entire household,” Silver said. “It’s very hard for us to have enough food for everyone, certainly not enough for everyone to get as much as they need.

Silver pointed out that high demand is emblematic of a much broader problem, one that charitable organizations alone can’t resolve. “For us, the main struggle is that a lot of people hope or expect the food pantry to be the solution for food insecurity on our campus. And we’re just not at a point and probably will never be a point where that could be our function. But we can help dampen the effect of it in every single possible way that we can.”

Other food pantries on campuses around the country are feeling similar constraints, caught between rising demand and falling food donations. Looking toward to the summer and fall, advocates and students alike are concerned that food insecurity could soar as supports like Snap become harder to access once again.

“We are frankly really concerned,” Hansen said. “A lot of the pandemic resources that were supporting students in their higher education goals are falling by the wayside […] So we’re very worried about what the next couple of months is going to look like for our student population.”

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