Congress Made More College Students Eligible for Food Benefits During the Pandemic. Should Those Changes Be Permanent?
By Jennifer Hogg
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress temporarily expanded the generosity of the social safety net. This included, for example, providing stimulus checks, nearly doubling the Child Tax Credit, and expanding SNAP, the nation’s largest food assistance program. People already participating in SNAP received more money each month, and some college students who were previously ineligible to participate became eligible.
College students are typically ineligible for SNAP benefits unless they meet one of several specific exemptions. This rule was set by Congress in the 1970s to prevent students who appear temporarily poor but are actually being financially supported by family members from accessing public benefits. Between January 2021 and April 2023, two additional exemptions were temporarily added that greatly expanded the number of college students who could access benefits. The first exemption was for students who had zero expected family contribution (EFC; now revised and renamed the Student Aid Index) on their FAFSA form. The second exemption was that students who were eligible for Federal Work-Study could now qualify for SNAP.
A recent analysis from the California Policy Lab (CPL) sheds light on how these policy changes affected community college students. In 2018, only 35% of California community college students who met the income requirements for SNAP had a student exemption and were eligible to access benefits. In 2021, that share nearly doubled to 69%, which represents 75,000 additional students who were eligible for SNAP in fall 2021. In addition, the amount of money California community college students received each month nearly doubled, from $123 in 2019 to $245 in 2021.
With the end of the federal state of emergency, these policies went away in early 2023. However, many students who have zero EFC or are eligible for Work-Study are still struggling to afford food during college, particularly in the aftermath of rapid inflation. Recent survey data indicates that about 50% of California community college students are food insecure. The federal EATS Act, which we have also written about, would remove the extra restrictions on college students entirely. Skeptics of the EATS Act approach may be drawn to the more targeted approach of the pandemic-era policies, which focused on students who not only have low incomes themselves but also come from families with low incomes or other indicators of need covered by the current exemptions.
Because not all community college students file FAFSAs, some low-income students would not qualify even with the expanded pandemic-era exemption rules. However, our research indicates that a substantial number of students would become eligible if these temporary exemptions were made permanent. The number could be further expanded by encouraging more students to file FAFSAs.
CPL will continue its research in this area—including generating evidence on the benefits, in improved student educational outcomes, of connecting eligible students to CalFresh—to support better, more informed policy to support educational equity.
