New report proposes helping students qualify for benefits including food stamps
With tuition up, income flat, statistics show some students can’t afford to regularly eat
WaSHINGTON — How much trouble are some community college students having paying their way through college? Advocates say the government should make it easier for them to get public benefits such as food stamps as a form of financial aid.
That was one of the ideas put forward at a forum to explore how public benefits can be better leveraged to fill the huge financial gaps that confront low-income students.
“We really need to re-conceptualize how we view financial aid,” said Amy Ellen Duke-Benfield, a senior postsecondary policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, or CLASP, which advocates for low-income people, and which hosted the forum.
Duke-Benfield called for easing some of the work requirements of public benefits such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which offers up to $194 per month to people who work 20 hours a week. The rule makes the program incompatible with going to college, she said, citing research that students who work that many hours per week are less likely to graduate.
Duke-Benfield also said more must be done to make public benefits from childcare to housing and utility assistance seem “normal and a good thing” to help community college students.
“We’re talking about a small population of people, but we’re talking about people who are no different than an 18-year-old who wants to go to college and get a good job,” she said.
CLASP’s proposal to help community college students qualify for public benefits comes against the backdrop of calls from the Obama Administration to make community college free, and on the heels ofa report that found half of all community college students are going hungry. About one in five have skipped meals because they couldn’t afford food, that report found.
More than 200 food pantries have been opened on college campuses, some at wealthy universities, where low-income students apparently are going without eating, according to the College and University Food Bank Alliance.
If these reports identify a problem, Duke-Benfield’s proposal to help New report proposes helping students qualify for benefits including food stamps - The Hechinger Report:
