July 28, 2025

This year has been marked by almost unimaginable upheaval for students, families, and institutions of higher education. From deep cuts to higher education and safety net programs in the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” to massive layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education, to cuts to essential health and science research, the postsecondary education landscape looks radically different, and far more challenging, than it has in decades.

As students take stock of their ability to finance their education in the wake of student loan cuts, and colleges and universities address the fallout from the immediate and long-term fiscal threats of reduced federal funding, another set of major funding decisions is being shaped this summer, with enormous potential consequences for the ability to help students enroll and succeed in their degree programs.

Right now, Congress is in the midst of debating a path forward for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 appropriations, which will impact funding for a number of critical programs that help college students afford food, housing, child care, health care, transportation, and more. Appropriations bills for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Agriculture, and more are key to maintaining investments made in the proven strategies to address student basic needs insecurity, and are set to be taken up this week.

The Trump Administration has called for deep cuts to higher education programs in its proposed FY2026 “skinny budget.”  But lawmakers must avoid these cuts and instead put federal financial aid programs, including Pell Grants and campus-based aid programs such as Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (SEOG) and Federal Work-Study (FWS), on sound fiscal footing while maintaining or increasing award levels for students. Programs like TRIO that help students address academic and non-academic barriers, should also be protected. And Congress must ensure that federal agencies and regulators have the resources they need to administer student aid and provide support to institutions that rely on federal funding to help students access crucial support services. 

At the Hope Center, we've also identified several oft-overlooked federal programs that hold enormous potential to build an ecosystem of support on campuses across the country, and ensure durable federal investment to help students focus on what matters while they’re enrolled. At a time of so much uncertainty in federal policy, we’re urging lawmakers to fund the programs that lower students’ costs and get them to and through college, strengthening the nation’s workforce and economy.  

Three Federal Basic Needs Investments That Must Be Protected and Expanded

Thanks to support from our partners at ECMC Foundation, we’re examining how three specific federal programs are reaching students and impacting their ability to stay enrolled and succeed in college. Here’s what we’re fighting for:

Basic Needs for Postsecondary Students Program (“Basic Needs Grants”)

First created in 2021, the Basic Needs Grant program, administered by the U.S. Department of Education as part of the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), is the only federal investment directly supporting systemic, campus-based solutions to address student basic needs insecurity. These grants help colleges connect students to public benefits, address food and housing insecurity, and implement long-term, sustainable interventions.

The demand is overwhelming. In the last funding cycle, only 13% of eligible applicants received funding—and all those selected had perfect scores. At least 22 states and Puerto Rico have campuses already benefiting from this program since FY 2021, but the need far outpaces current funding levels.

The President’s budget, unfortunately, called for eliminating all FIPSE programs. Instead, we’re calling on Congress to allocate $45 million for this critical program, in line with other programs within FIPSE from the last fiscal year, and to preserve supportive language in the committee report to ensure another round of funding is possible in FY 2026. Without this investment, student basic needs insecurity will grow more prevalent as students face rising costs and increasing cuts to the safety net. And that’s not because solutions don’t exist; it’s because they’re underfunded. 

Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS)

One in five undergraduates—and nearly one in three graduate students—is also a parent. Yet the number of colleges offering on-campus child care has been declining for decades.

The CCAMPIS program is designed to change that by funding campus-based childcare services for low-income students. However, it has been vastly underfunded for years. One estimate suggests that only 1% of potentially eligible students are served by the program and an overview of CCAMPIS recipients also reveals an underrepresentation of rural-serving institutions as well. Furthermore, our preliminary review has found that HBCUs & TCUs account for only 2% of CCAMPIS recipients. CCAMPIS is even more crucial given that other federal childcare programs, such as the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF), contain a wide array of rules that can prevent students from receiving benefits, and are themselves underfunded.

The President’s budget called for eliminating CCAMPIS entirely, but this cut is unfathomable. Instead, we’re urging Congress to increase CCAMPIS funding to $500 million so that more parenting students—especially those at community colleges, HBCUs, TCUs, and other Minority-Serving Institutions—can access the child care they need to stay in school and improve lifetime outcomes for themselves and their children by graduating.

We’re also pushing to keep important language from previous years that waives an arbitrarily low cap on the maximum grants that institutions can receive, giving under-resourced institutions the flexibility to build or expand viable on-campus childcare options.

Garrett Lee Smith (GLS) Campus Suicide Prevention Grants 

Too many college students are struggling with their mental health, driving them to consider leaving school. The Healthy Minds Study reports that over 40% of students are experiencing depression and another 36% struggle with anxiety. And yet, nearly half of those students haven’t received any treatment in the past year. The Hope Center Student Basic Needs Survey shows that among students who had previously stopped out without completing a credential, over half (54%) reported that mental health was one of their reasons for stopping out.

Despite an increase in awareness of student mental health challenges, the Garrett Lee Smith (GLS) Campus Grant is one of the only federal programs dedicated to supporting mental and behavioral health services for college students—but funding is painfully inadequate and amounts to a rounding error on the federal budget.

We’re calling for substantial increases in GLS campus grants, and funding parity between the grants to higher education and those going toward states to administer grants for youth, which received $43.8 million last year. Policymakers have helpfully expanded mental health resources for K-12 students in recent years, and it’s time for higher ed students to receive the same level of care and support. In particular, greater funding is needed for students attending MSIs, which have received less than one-third of GLS Campus Grant funding over the history of the program.

We therefore applaud language from the FY 2025 House committee mark prioritizing underserved campuses like community colleges, HBCUs, TCUs, and MSIs — and we urge Congress to waive matching requirements that put vital funding out of reach for these institutions.

Student Success Starts With Meeting Basic Needs

Too often, federal policy conversations ignore the conditions that make completing a degree possible. You can’t study when you’re hungry. You can't persist in school without child care if you're a parent. You can’t thrive on campus without mental health support.

Investing in programs like Basic Needs Grants, CCAMPIS, and GLS Campus Grants doesn’t just help individual students —it strengthens our institutions, our workforce, and our economy. Too often these days, federal policy is going in the wrong direction. 

The Trump Administration’s proposed FY2026 budget would eliminate each of these programs, and the Administration is threatening to take back funding that has already been appropriated for vital education programs—leaving institutions in a state of constant uncertainty. This is backwards: we need to invest in the areas that are vital to building a more dynamic, productive, healthy, and equitable system of higher education and economy, and we need to ensure the programs to do so are stable and long-term.

Fortunately, Congress has a chance right now to choose a future where more students graduate and fewer fall behind. Let’s make sure they take it.

In the coming months, we'll continue to look into who has been served by these grant programs to date. We are excited to connect with institutions who have received funding to share more about the life-saving programs and impacts they've supported. 

Have you or your institution benefitted from one of these grants or the programs they've supported? We'd love to hear from you at hopectr@temple.edu.