Most Eligible College Students Don’t Participate in SNAP. How Can Colleges Change That?

By Jennifer Hogg

In California, only one in four eligible community college students enrolls in CalFresh. Beyond the impact on individual students, this amounts to $34 million in federal money that students in the California Community Colleges (CCC) are leaving on the table.

The California legislature, state agencies, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, and community college districts are investing more resources to close this gap. At the state level, Assembly Bill 1326 (AB 1326) requires that each county social services department designate someone to coordinate with colleges to increase take-up. AB 132 dedicated $100 million in one-time funding for new and existing basic needs offices on CCC campuses.

What do we know from research about the most effective strategies to connect more students to food benefits? In 2021, the California Policy Lab (CPL) and our partners tested strategies for reaching out to students who were newly eligible for CalFresh. We found that repeated outreach, multiple methods (emails and postcards), and simplified messaging increased applications and enrollment in CalFresh. Research from The HOPE Center at Temple University suggests that text messages about CalFresh can also be an effective tool. However, closing such a large take-up gap will likely require more high-touch interventions.

To understand what strategies campuses are using to connect eligible students to CalFresh, we conducted informal interviews with basic needs staff across 23 public colleges and universities, along with experts in this area such as the Center for Healthy Communities, in summer 2022. We learned that outreach falls into one of three categories:

• General advertising: Nearly all of the colleges we spoke to advertise CalFresh to the general student body through tabling, fliers, social media, orientation presentations, and email blasts.
• Targeted outreach: Most colleges also conduct some form of targeted outreach to likely eligible students, typically through coordination with the financial aid office.
• Application Assistance: Over half of the colleges provide one-to-one application assistance, sometimes through fellow students who had experience with CalFresh. A subset of these schools also provides post-application assistance, including inquiring about specific cases at the county benefits office.

Strong relationships between counties and campuses emerged as a powerful strategy for increasing enrollment. Where these relationships are strong, campus and county representatives work together to understand and adapt to new policies (e.g., expanded eligibility during the pandemic), strategize to increase enrollment, and resolve issues with individual cases. Students’ experiences with the county can have a multiplying effect: If they have a positive experience, they may share that with their networks on campus, convincing others that it’s worth applying. AB 1326 should help increase this type of coordination.

Of course, as we noted in an earlier ARCC post, there’s also a role for policy change; for example, the federal Enhance Access to SNAP (EATS) Act would remove the onerous eligibility rules currently faced by college students.

CPL is exploring opportunities to evaluate promising high-touch outreach strategies so that colleges know how best to allocate their outreach efforts. If you are interested in partnering to test the efficacy of your outreach, please contact jennifer@capolicylab.org.