Helping States Support College Student Basic Needs Amid Rapid Policy Change

• In Event: College Affordability and Student Success: Evidence on Policies to Address Non-Tuition Costs and Student Basic Needs

Abstract

Food, housing, transportation, child care, and health coverage represent substantial and often underappreciated barriers to college degree and credential completion. For low-income students, students of color, parenting students, and students with immigration-related barriers to public programs, these costs frequently exceed tuition and fees and are only partially offset by financial aid. Public benefit programs, including SNAP, Medicaid, and child care assistance, have historically served as an important backstop, but the federal policy environment governing these programs is shifting rapidly, creating new vulnerabilities for students and the state systems designed to support them.

This presentation shares findings from the College Student Basic Needs Network–Great Lakes (CSBN-GL), an Urban Institute initiative convening six states in the Great Lakes region to share learning, coordinate strategy, and advance policy solutions for college student basic needs. The network reflects a deliberate reframing of the problem: basic needs challenges are treated not as institution-level service failures that each campus must solve independently, but as state-level policy problems amenable to cross-agency and cross-sector solutions. This upstream orientation—focused on reducing the depth of basic needs insecurity in the first place, rather than managing emergencies after the fact—distinguishes the initiative from most campus-based basic needs efforts.

The paper documents how participating states are tracking and responding to concurrent shifts across multiple federal policy domains: eligibility changes and administrative barriers in SNAP and Medicaid; immigration-related chilling effects on student and family participation in public programs; and higher education funding uncertainty affecting institutional capacity to sustain basic needs infrastructure. Drawing on qualitative data from quarterly convenings, state-level policy scans, structured interviews with state higher education and human services officials, and action grant documentation, we identify where states are finding workable levers within existing authority, where cross-agency coordination is proving effective, and where statutory or regulatory change is needed to buffer federal disruption.

The community of practice model is examined as a mechanism for policy learning and action. The network connects state higher education agencies, human services departments, community college systems, and nonprofit partners at a routine cadence, with access to national policy expertise and action grants to catalyze state-level work. We will share how this model enables states to continue progress on this important higher education policy topic during significant federal volatility and what might be necessary to ensure durable policy change.

Findings are directly relevant to state policymakers, higher education administrators, and practitioners working to protect access for students whose unmet non-tuition costs remain a significant obstacle to degree completion.

Author

• Theresa M Anderson, Urban Institute
  Presenting Author