December 2025
The Hope Center for Student Basic Needs is proud to announce a grant from Lumina Foundation to examine federal policy solutions and investments that secure students’ basic needs and strengthen economic mobility in higher education.
This investment comes at a time of deep urgency. Students across the country are experiencing alarming levels of basic needs insecurity—driven by soaring costs of living, tuition once again on the rise, recent federal policy changes that threaten to reverse years of progress and reduce degree completion.
According to The Hope Center’s 2023–24 Student Basic Needs Survey, 3 in 5 students experience food or housing insecurity while enrolled, hindering their chances of completing a higher education credential, finding stable employment, and achieving long-term financial security.
Recent cuts to federal financial aid and public benefits, rapidly intensifying state budget pressures, and declines in federal data transparency all pose significant risks—especially for students who have been historically and systemically marginalized. Ensuring that policymakers understand the consequences of these policy shifts, and the opportunities to reverse the harm using more data-driven decision-making, is critical.
When students tell us they are skipping meals, couch-surfing, or working multiple jobs to remain enrolled, we have an obligation to respond with urgency and clarity. The Hope Center's work will help the country understand that basic needs are a core component of federal higher education policy, not an ancillary concern, and will ensure that decisionmakers have the evidence required to protect student well-being and long-term economic mobility.
Ernest Ezeugo
Strategy Officer for Federal Policy, The Lumina Foundation
Lumina Foundation’s grant will expand The Hope Center’s capacity through early 2026 to:
- Track, analyze, and respond to rapidly evolving federal policy proposals—including those enacted through the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB);
- Provide technical assistance and evidence-based guidance to Congress and federal agencies;
- Participate in collective efforts to analyze and respond to policy developments, including in coordination with the National Coalition for College Student Essential Needs (NCCSEN) and similar state-level efforts;
- Produce accessible research and communications that illuminate the scale of basic needs insecurity and spotlight student voices.
Higher education is under unprecedented pressures and attacks that could roll back all the progress we’ve made as a country to improve persistence and completion. If students can’t afford the everyday cost of living, they certainly cannot afford to go to college. This essential grant will help us change the narrative with policymakers and the public to center students and their families.
