What Have We Learned? Takeaways From the California Policy Lab’s Research on College Student Participation in SNAP
By Jennifer Hogg
Over the past five years, the California Policy Lab (CPL) has studied college student participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), known as CalFresh in California. Higher education administrators have grown increasingly concerned with high rates of food insecurity among students, and in response, they have ramped up efforts to connect eligible students to SNAP. Thanks to strong partnerships with California’s state agencies and higher education institutions, CPL has published eleven research briefs and papers examining this issue.
What We Have Learned So Far
We have learned several important lessons with implications for state policy and college practice around CalFresh benefits.
A sizable share of low-income students become ineligible for SNAP when they enroll in college. Since the 1970s, federal rules have barred most college students from participating in SNAP unless they meet specific exemptions, such as parenting a young child or participating in work-study. In one CPL study, we found that 37% of students who were SNAP-eligible in high school were no longer eligible once they entered college. In other words, we know most of these students continue to have low incomes, but this extra eligibility hurdle means they’re no longer benefiting from the program.
Temporary federal policy changes during COVID allowed more low-income students to participate in SNAP (but those have ended). During the pandemic, Congress added two temporary exemptions that nearly doubled the share of low-income California community college (CCC) students eligible for SNAP. These changes were well targeted at students from low-income families, far reaching, and relatively simple for students to understand. Although these provisions expired in 2023, they offer a potential roadmap for future reforms in a future political climate.
Most eligible students are not participating. Even under current rules, many eligible students do not participate. We estimate that only about one in four eligible CCC students actually receives SNAP benefits. This take-up gap means that students miss out on hundreds of millions of dollars each term that they could use to pay for food.
SNAP can help make attending college more affordable. SNAP covers about a third of the average participating CCC student’s food budget—about $123 a month. This is particularly helpful for students who have to cut back on work hours (and earnings) to attend school. This consistent support can relieve financial pressure and improve students’ ability to focus on their education.
Email outreach is a low-cost way to increase take-up. In one CPL study, students who received an email notifying them of their potential SNAP eligibility were significantly more likely to apply and enroll. Follow-up communications, especially combining emails and postcards, induced more applications than single emails, and simpler messages also elicited stronger responses.
What’s Next?
CPL will continue to research college student participation in SNAP in the coming years to help inform policy and practice in California. Additionally, since the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, research on SNAP’s efficacy in supporting college students may be relevant to policymakers in other states who will need to decide whether and how to respond to federal changes to SNAP.
Specifically, we will be working on answering the following questions:
- Does SNAP participation improve educational or long-term financial outcomes?
- How have recent California state policy changes affected participation?
- How effective is high-touch application assistance at increasing participation?
- Does SNAP reduce food insecurity among college students? How many students are food insecure but ineligible for SNAP?
This research would not have been possible without the support of the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education and the Spencer Foundation, and collaboration with our fellow community college researchers in the ARCC Network.
