Student Supports: The Role of Social Safety-Net Programs in College Student Success

Many students struggling to meet their basic needs are eligible for safety-net programs, but may not be accessing them. Because colleges and universities already work with students on financial aid, they are well-situated to help connect students to safety-net benefits. However, data limitations have been an obstacle to assessing eligibility and then encouraging eligible students to apply and enroll. This project is linking data on college enrollment and outcomes, safety net participation, and FAFSA applications to estimate the number of California college students who participate in safety-net programs, such as CalFresh, and the number of students who are eligible but not participating in these programs. This research will also help shed light on the relationship between participating in safety-net programs and student outcomes, and will inform efforts to develop, pilot, and test strategies for using administrative data to improve outreach to potentially eligible students.

This project links more than a decade of data, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, from the California Student Aid Commission, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, the University of California Office of the President, and the California Department of Social Services, to create the Student Supports database.

This project is supported by the Spencer Foundation and the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A220451 to The Regents of the University of California, Berkeley. For more information on the Student Supports project, visit the California Policy Lab’s website. 

Publications

2024-06-04T14:26:15+00:00
Cover of report with title and image of students smiling on campus

Filling the Gap: CalFresh Eligibility Among University of California and California Community College Students

California Policy Lab | June 2024

Jesse Rothstein, Johanna Lacoe, Sam Ayers, Karla Palos Castellanos, Elise Dizon-Ross, Anna Doherty, Jamila Henderson, Jennifer Hogg, Sarah Hoover, Alan Perez & Justine Weng

This report links college enrollment and financial aid application data and compares it to CalFresh eligibility rules to create more precise estimates of how many students are likely eligible for CalFresh. The authors pinpoint the eligibility criteria and program rules that appear to have the biggest impact in determining eligibility.

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2024-04-25T15:56:01+00:00
Report cover

CalFresh Participation Among California’s College Students: A 2020–21 School Year Update

California Policy Lab | April 2024

Alan Perez, Sarah Hoover, Jamila Henderson, Jennifer Hogg, Johanna Lacoe & Jesse Rothstein

This data point provides estimates of CalFresh participation rates among community college and University of California (UC) students in California. It updates numbers from a previous first data point, which focused on CalFresh enrollment during the 2019–20 school year.

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Lead Researchers

Jesse Rothstein is the Carmel P. Friesen Chair in Public Policy at UC Berkeley and the faculty director of the California Policy Lab’s UC Berkeley site. Rothstein’s research focuses on education policy and the labor market, with a focus on inequality of opportunity and outcomes. He can be reached at rothstein@berkeley.edu.

Johanna Lacoe is the research director of California Policy Lab’s UC Berkeley site. She is a policy scholar with expertise in criminal and juvenile justice, education, employment, and housing. She can be reached at johanna.lacoe@berkeley.edu.

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