Hungry Students, the Union, and the College's Responsibilities

A recent article in the Texas Tribune showed nicely how the increasing cost of Texas state college tuition is affecting working-class students. For example:

A student today would have to work 62 hours a week at a minimum wage job to cover the full cost of attending a public four-year college, according to research from Trellis, a nonprofit that tracks student debt issues.

We should not be surprised with these numbers nor are we surprised that the State of Texas government continues to ignore the relationships of poverty in Texas, access to higher education, and health in our communities' families (for more data on poverty in Texas, see here). All student costs are increasing, while local household incomes are stagnant. Here, we focus on food costs for student college students:

Source: Trellis Company

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates the minimum dietary needs of an adult can be met on $267 per month provided that all food is prepared at home, an unlikely scenario for young adults. Many of our Lone Star College students, however, do not have sufficient employment for even $267 per month and many of those students actually bring their income back to their families collectively (this is another blog post, forthcoming). Many students live in areas where they cannot find jobs; other jobs struggle with transportation, course demands, jobs, and family responsibilities. In short, our students are hungry. That hunger is both a distraction, but cognitively affecting academic performance.

• 36 percent of university students were housing-insecure in the past year, as were 46 percent of community college students.
• Less than half of all students surveyed reported being completely secure, meaning they did not experience any food or housing insecurity, or homelessness, in the past year.
• Black and Native American students were more likely than non-Hispanic white or Asian students to experience food or housing insecurity.

We applaud our faculty colleagues who bring food to their offices, to the classrooms, to writing centers and other places for students to grab an apple or snack bar. Students are amazingly grateful for these gifts from faculty pockets. But colleges must realize that these students' hunger immediately and directly affect the college's success.

Houston Community College aggressively addresses hunger and we recommend the Tribune's summary and Houston Chronicle's recent attention to this too-silent discussion. We also applaud LSC-Montgomery's years of food pantry experience and LSC-North Harris's student emergency fund and emerging food pantry program. BakerRipley, partnering with East Aldine Management District and local churches, are aware of these food insecurity concerns.

But the college must be much more aware and assertive in addressing this long-term and persistent community problem.

We propose this in three prongs:

1. Each college should make their campus as centers for research of food in the communities, including food deserts, poverty, and student family access to nutritious food. 
2. Each campus should connect with current community resources for food banks.
3. Use the college's political influence to address these concerns at the legislative level, including decreasing tuition and fees. 

Readers, union members, and allies should address this with their union representatives and their Professional and Support Staff Associations and Faculty Senates. Academic departments should address this concern as part of their curriculums [sic] as community problems worthy of intellectual inquery. 

Additional Resources

Trellis Company. "State of Student Aid and  Higher Education in Texas." 2017. https://www.trelliscompany.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/SOSA.pdf  

U.S. Department of Agriculture. "Official USDA Food Plans: Cost of Food at Home at Four Levels, U.S. Average, June 2016." (http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/USDAFoodCost-Home.htm);